


Altered Egos

by gryvon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Porn, Kidnapped Tony Stark, M/M, Mutual Pining, Protective Bucky Barnes, Secret Identity, Team as Family, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Young Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-03 18:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21183926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryvon/pseuds/gryvon
Summary: He turns and grabs the nearest potential weapon—a fairly hefty wrench—as he faces the beekeeper-lookalike goon. Said goon looks down at the slumped figures of Tony's guards and... chuckles? That's not the reaction Tony was expecting. It makes sense once the goon lifts off their helmet to reveal a familiar face.Tony tosses the wrench aside and climbs back to his improvised bomb with a grin. "You're late.""Had trouble finding the place." Natasha's voice is warm in a way Tony's missed the last few days. Her footsteps stop close by. There's a long pause, presumably while she studies the twenty-foot-tall robot. "Did they really...?""Yep," Tony says as he twists and slides down to the ground beside her. He pats the closest leg. "Meet my new best friend, Mr. Roboto. He's going to explode in ten minutes, so we should leave."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arboreal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arboreal/gifts).

> Written for Arboreal for the Marvel Trumps Hate 2018 auction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony saves himself and Bucky worries over Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've changed the timeline up a bit for this story. Tony's much younger (early 20's) and Iron Man 1, Iron Man 2, Avengers, and Captain America: Winter Soldier all take place closer together.

Tony bites his lip as he twists a wire into place. It’s at the edge of his reach and his body’s not too happy with him right now. Three days in AIM’s less than tender care will do that, but it’s not his first kidnapping-torture rodeo. Hell, he’s probably past single digits by now. Still, he’s better than anyone realizes. He knows how to work through the pain and how to be the most insufferable ass on his way out.

Because he is getting out. He’s getting out today. That or going out in a blaze of glory but he’s fine with dying, as long as he gets to take this AIM base with him.

The door hisses open and Tony jerks, pulling out of the giant robot’s guts like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Not that Tony ever was that kind of kid. They didn’t have cookie jars in the Stark household, or even cookies most of the time.

He turns and grabs the nearest potential weapon—a hefty wrench—as he faces the beekeeper-lookalike goon. Said goon looks down at the slumped figures of Tony’s guards and... chuckles? That’s not the reaction Tony was expecting. It makes sense once the goon lifts off their helmet to reveal a familiar face.

Tony tosses the wrench aside and climbs back to his improvised bomb with a grin. “You’re late.”

“Had trouble finding the place.” Natasha’s voice is warm in a way Tony’s missed the last few days. Her footsteps stop close by. There’s a long pause, presumably while she studies the twenty-foot-tall robot. “Did they really...?”

“Yep,” Tony says as he twists and slides down to the ground beside her. He pats the closest leg. “Meet my new best friend, Mr. Roboto. He’s going to explode in ten minutes, so we should leave.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow and slips the rest of the way out of her borrowed disguise. She presses a finger to her earbud. “Coulson, we’ve got a Stark Special on a dime. We’ll be coming out hot.” She looks at Tony. “Any souvenirs?”

“For you? Always.” He walks over to the terminal they’d forced him to work at while threatening him with violence if he didn’t comply—and then following through when he inevitably didn’t comply—and hits a sequence of six keys. The screen goes dark. The rest of the computers in the room follow and they hear loud cursing from the lab next door. “JARVIS should be getting an encrypted copy of all the data that’s being wiped from AIM’s systems. He’ll decrypt and pass it on to SHIELD’s servers.”

Natasha brushes a light kiss over his cheek as he joins her at the door. “You always get me the best presents.”

Tony chuckles and accepts the pistol she holds out to him. “Please. This is nothing compared to the Manolo Blahnik I modified for you for Christmas. Or the diamond Widow’s Bites for your birthday two years ago.”

“Mm,” Natasha hums. “Stylish and deadly. My favorite combination.”

They share a quick nod and step out into the hallway. Natasha turns left and Tony turns right, their guns going off in ruthless symmetry as they take out the AIM goons waiting to ambush them. If Tony could see their faces, he’d imagine a lot of surprised looks. No one ever expects tiny genius Tony Stark to act like a SHIELD-trained operative. That’s why he has Iron Man as a “bodyguard” to fight his battles for him, but Tony’s been deadly long before he joined SHIELD thanks to personal tutoring from his dear aunt Peggy.

“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Coulson says by way of greeting as the AIM compound explodes hard enough to make the ground shake. His hands are gentle as he helps Tony into the SHIELD transport. “It’s good to have you back,” Coulson adds on a quieter, more personal note.

Now that the adrenaline is fading, Tony can admit, yeah, he needs a little help getting into the vehicle right now. His injuries, while relatively minor, are extensive and his body’s starting to lock up. Natasha bats his hands away from where he’s trying to fasten his seatbelt. Coulson sits next to him and Tony lets himself slump sideways a little, leaning into the warmth of a friendly body. Natasha presses against his other side. Her fingers twine with his and the last thing he thinks before blacking out is how nice it feels to be safe again.

* * *

It feels like days instead of a few hours before Tony’s released from SHIELD medical with a wrapped wrist, prescription pain pills, and instructions to take it easy for the next week. Instructions that he blatantly ignores by heading straight for his workshop as soon as Coulson drops Tony and Natasha at the tower.

“Welcome home, Sir.” JARVIS’s voice is soothing. Tony pauses two steps inside the workshop and breathes deeply, letting himself finally relax now that he’s surrounded by his tech.

“It’s good to be back,” Tony says. He heads for his primary workstation. The monitors flicker to life, screens full of information exactly as he’d left it. “What’d I miss?”

A corner of the screen on his left changes to local news footage of the Avengers fighting Doombots over near Coney Island. “The Avengers received a call-out early this morning,” JARVIS informs him. “The Captain requested Iron Man’s assistance, but Agent Coulson informed him that Iron Man had a prior commitment.”

Tony sighs. He can only imagine how angry Steve was that Iron Man wasn’t available. Natasha too, since she’d been busy rescuing him. He groans and drops his face in his hands. He’s not looking forward to dealing with an irate Captain. Hopefully Tony can avoid the rest of the team for a few days and let it all blow-over on its own.

“So, nothing got out about my involuntary vacation?”

“No, sir. Ms. Potts was informed at the same time as SHIELD was alerted that you’d been compromised. She cleared your calendar through Sunday. I took the liberty of informing her that you were recovered. She asked that I pass along a request to call her at your earliest convenience but not, and she stressed this part, until after you’ve slept.”

Tony couldn’t help the tiny smile that crossed his lips at Pepper’s obvious concern. It was nice knowing he’d been missed by more than just his robots, all three of which were whirring at him from behind worktables, waiting for Tony to notice them.

“Come on, boys.” He spins away from his monitors and holds out his arms. DUM-E is the first to greet him. Tony pulls the robot into a hug, his smile growing as the robot gently pats Tony’s head with its metal strut. Butterfingers and U crowd in the moment DUM-E backs away. Tony dutifully pets their chassis, reassuring with touch and soft words.

“Did you recover the suitcase suit?” Tony asks.

“Master Hogan was able to retrieve it along with the Audi R8.”

“Good, good.” With one last pat to DUM-E’s camera, Tony turns back to his workstations. “Okay, boys, let’s get to work. Daddy’s got a bunch of AIM files to analyze. Start the coffee, J, it’s gonna be a long night.”

* * *

“Hey!” Bucky bounces to his feet as his favorite Russian assassin saunters into the room. He meets her halfway and brushes a quick kiss against each cheek. “How’d the mission go?”

“Successful,” Natasha says in her own succinct manner.

“I miiissseed you,” Clint sings from the couch, a dopey grin on his face. “It isn’t the same without you and Iron Man. Steve didn’t let me jump off any buildings and the overall stabbing ratio was down thirty percent.”

Natasha arches an eyebrow. “Only thirty?”

Bucky shrugs. “The Doombots swarmed my nest. Had to get up close and personal more than usual.”

Natasha nods and drops onto the couch between Steve and Clint. Bucky fetches two cold bottles of water from the fridge, one for him, one for her. “How is Iron Man?” he asks as he passes her drink.

“Fine,” Natasha says. She watches him with a hint of a smirk as she takes a bite out of a slice of pizza. They both know what he wants to ask, but she’s going to make him say it.

He sighs. “Did Tony come back with you? JARVIS said he was out on a mission with SHIELD.”

Clint snorts and Steve rolls his eyes but neither tease him about Bucky’s very obvious, incredibly hopeless crush on the young genius.

Natasha exaggerates chewing and swallowing before offering a quick, “Yes.” She speaks up before Bucky can get more than two feet toward the door. “He’s probably hungry. You should take him some pizza.”

“Right.” He stacks a plate with three slices of cheese and pepperoni, then grabs a fresh cup of coffee from the kitchen.

“Good luck, Romeo,” Clint calls as the elevator doors slide shut.

Both of Bucky’s hands are occupied, otherwise he’d flip Clint off. He settles instead for a quickly shouted, “Bite me!”

The elevator descends. Bucky gives it a minute until he’s out of enhanced hearing range before asking, “How is he?”

He doesn’t know the details of what Tony had been doing with Natasha, Iron Man, and SHIELD, but he worries anytime Tony’s out in the field. He knows Tony’s had training. He’s taught Tony some hand-to-hand moves, and he knows Tony’s competent but he’s not on the same level as Natasha or Clint. Few people are, even counting the enhanced members of SHIELD.

“Sir is...” JARVIS pauses, likely working through what he can say versus what Tony’s ordered him not to. Never a good sign. “...in need of sustenance and rest.”

“Well, I’ve got one of those covered. I’ll see what I can do about the other.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Barnes.”

The elevator doors open onto the workshop floor. The glass walls are blacked out at the moment, not giving Bucky even a tiny hint of what state the workshop and its resident genius are in. Only one way to find out.

“Hey, Tony,” Bucky calls out as he walks through the door, “do you- Jesus Christ!”

Bucky freezes two steps into the workshop and stares as Tony flinches away from him. Bucky’s not sure if it’s because Tony’s startled or embarrassed or in pain. Maybe all the above. There’s a shiner covering half of Tony’s face and an Ace bandage around his left wrist, plus half a dozen minor cuts and bruises littering his body. And that’s only the parts Bucky can see. It’s hard to see Tony as anything but young as he twists away from Bucky, trying to hide the extent of his injuries behind deflection and bravado.

“Barnes, what-”

Bucky crosses the space in three quick steps. He sets the pizza and coffee aside, forgotten for the moment in his need to make sure Tony’s not too badly hurt. Tony flinches again when Bucky touches his face, gently guiding it to the side so Bucky can inspect the damage. “Christ,” Bucky says, with feeling. “Who did this to you?”

“No one. I’m fine,” Tony says in a tone that implies the exact opposite. He rolls his chair to the side, moving out of easy reach. Tony’s skittish about physical contact at the best of times. He’s not even trying to hide how touch-averse he is right now, which means whatever happened was recent enough to leave Tony still shaken. “Did you need something? If not, get out.” Tony zeros in on the plate and mug. “Leave the pizza. Is that coffee?”

Bucky knows better than to take offense at Tony’s surly aggression. It’s a defense mechanism Tony uses when he’s hurting, though Bucky’s sure he’s on a very short list of people that have figured that out. Tony’s like a hedgehog—prickly unless you approach him just right.

He moves the offerings in front of Tony’s keyboard and drops onto his usual bench beside Tony’s desk. “Yes, I brought you coffee and pizza. Nat said you might be hungry.” He scans Tony from head to toe. “Though she seems to have left out key information.”

Tony doesn’t look at him while he downs half the coffee in one swallow. “Nothing important here. I’m fine. It’s fine. You can leave.”

Bucky sighs. He doesn’t want to ask for Tony’s help right now, but it’s the only way to get Tony talking. “My arm could use a tune-up but it’s nothing that can’t wait if you’re busy.”

Tony releases an explosive sigh and rolls closer. He’s too nice, despite his blustering facade. He won’t let Bucky leave until he’s sure whatever’s wrong with Bucky’s arm really is something that can wait. Most of the time he fixes it on the spot anyway. Tony absolutely hates it when anything mechanical is malfunctioning and he could fix it. That goes double when it’s a piece of assistive tech, like Bucky’s arm or Clint’s hearing aids.

“Let me see.”

Bucky leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “Food first.”

Tony arches an eyebrow. “If you’re in pain, that comes first.”

“No pain, just some stiffness and a grinding noise. Eat.”

Tony rolls his eyes, but he makes a show of picking up a piece of pizza and taking a bite. One bite quickly turns into a second, and a third, then the whole slice is gone, leaving Bucky both strangely proud and impressed. Tony stares at the other two slices longingly. He reaches for a rag to wipe his hands instead.

“Uh-uh.” Bucky shakes his head and points. “Finish eating. You tore into that like you haven’t eaten in days.”

Tony’s sudden wince is worrying, like there’s maybe some truth to those words. Bucky’s going to have words with Natasha.

“Eat,” Bucky orders.

“Fine.” Tony throws out the word like the petulant teenager Bucky remembers from years ago. Bucky patiently waits, secretly pleased that he’s talked Tony into taking care of himself at least a little. He wants to do more, to offer Tony pain pills and tuck him into bed but he knows that’s not going to happen.

Tony rolls the rest of the way over to Bucky once he’s polished off the last slice. “Okay, food done, arm now.”

Bucky obligingly pulls off his shirt and sets his arm on the table between them. He pretends not to notice the desire that sparks there-and-gone in Tony’s eyes. It’s not for him. Not really. Putting aside the whole age difference between Tony’s twenty-five to Bucky’s one-hundred-going-on-thirty-something, there’s the whole herd of elephants in the room like the time Bucky unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Tony’s dad, only to have the next assassin HYDRA sent blow up Tony’s childhood home and everyone in it.

Tony, genius that he is, zeros in on the stiffness in Bucky’s elbow without Bucky saying a word. He has three plates open and his tools in Bucky’s arm before Bucky can blink. Stuff like this used to freak Bucky out, back in his early days with SHIELD, but he trusts Tony. More than he should, Steve would say, but Bucky’s known Tony longer than Steve has—ever since SHIELD recruited Tony fresh out of college to work on Bucky’s arm, before Tony could even legally drive himself to the SHIELD offices—and he doesn’t have the giant Howard-shaped blind spot that Steve does.

“What happened?” Bucky asks.

Tony doesn’t look up. “I thought you’d tell me, seeing as it’s your arm.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I meant to you. Did something happen with SHIELD? I know Nat and Iron Man were on a mission.” Boy, did Steve pitch a fit about that. They were down their main aerial support and stealth operative. They managed, but it would have gone smoother if they’d had their full team

Tony flinches again and hunches in on himself. “Sorry.”

“Hey.” Bucky desperately wants to touch Tony, to offer gentle comfort, but he knows he’ll have the opposite effect. “It’s not your fault.”

That was the exact wrong thing to say. Tony’s face shuts down and he ducks his head so that he’s staring at Bucky’s arm and nothing else.

Bucky tries to flounder his way out of the hole he’s dug, as if throwing more words onto the pile will help him out. “We’ve all had SHIELD missions that took us out of contact for a few days. Iron Man’s your bodyguard first, SHIELD agent second. The Avengers can get along without him when needed. I’m more concerned about you.”

Tony looks up at that, obviously startled. Something like hope shines in his eyes and Bucky feels like he’s standing on the edge of something dangerous.

“You don’t have a suit of armor or years of training as a brainwashed assassin,” he covers hastily, because the last person who needs to find out about Bucky’s absolutely non-existent, barely there, hardly anything crush on Tony Stark is Tony Stark.

The bruise on Tony’s face looks even worse close-up. Combined with the dark circles under his eyes and pale skin, Tony seems more zombie-racoon than boy genius. “Do you need to go to the hospital? You don’t look that great.”

Tony huffs and pulls over a magnifying lens to get a better look at the delicate wires of Bucky’s elbow. “I’m fine. SHIELD medical officially cleared me. You can check with Coulson.”

Bucky fights down his rising eyebrows. If Tony voluntarily went to medical, it must have been bad. “And Iron Man?”

Something wry and wrong crosses Tony’s face before it’s hidden. “He’ll live to fight another day. Don’t worry.”

Bucky’s probably never going to stop worrying about Tony, but he can’t say that. Not if he ever wants Tony to let him through the workshop doors again.

The silence that stretches between them is only made awkward by Bucky’s incessant curiosity. He gnaws on his lower lip to hold the questions burning his tongue, but that only works for so long. Tony sets his tools aside to do one last visual inspection before closing Bucky’s arm. Bucky opens his mouth, about to spew out a dozen questions but Tony beats him to it.

“On a scale of ‘is everything a joke to you’ to ‘I know guys with none of that worth ten of you’, how mad is he?”

It’s Bucky’s turn to flinch. He hates—absolutely hates—how small Tony seems in that moment. Even his voice is tiny. He’s afraid. Tony would never admit it, but after their confrontation on the SHIELD Hellicarrier, back when Loki’s staff was messing with all their brains and Steve threatened Tony, Tony’s been afraid of Steve. Bucky’s not proud of how he acted that day—how any of them acted—but for some reason Tony’s a little better around Bucky than any of the others, excluding Bruce and Natasha. Probably because they’ve known each other longer.

“He’s not,” Bucky says.

Tony looks at him with an arched eyebrow.

“He understands when orders from SHIELD supersede Avengers missions,” Bucky corrects. Tony snorts, obviously not believing Bucky. “Really. Steve’s not a bad guy. I know you got off to a rocky start, but-”

“Save it,” Tony snaps. He rolls over to his computer, putting his back to Bucky. “You’re all set. You can leave now.”

Bucky’s learned to read the tension in Tony’s body and tell when he won’t admit he’s hurting. He wishes there was an easier way to make Tony understand that the team doesn’t hate him. Or make the team realize Tony doesn’t hate them. If he could just get Tony out of the lab more often....

Maybe he can ask Iron Man for some ideas next time Bucky sees him. Iron Man’s the closest to Tony out of all the Avengers. Until then, he needs to focus on what he can do to help Tony here and now.

“Will you tell me what happened?” Bucky asks, voice gentle. “Please?”

Tony’s shoulders tense then slump. He turns around, tilting his chair back to stare at the ceiling instead of Bucky. “Not much to tell. AIM wanted my genius for themselves, so they grabbed me from an SI event in Malibu. I disagreed. Iron Man and Black Widow busted me out. Coulson came in for the cleanup.”

Shock hits Bucky like a lightning bolt, making Bucky startle upright. “What? You were kidnapped? How... For how long?”

Tony shrugs like being kidnapped is nothing to be concerned about. Considering how often people try to kidnap him, it probably is old news to Tony but Bucky’s never going to be blasé about anyone threatening Tony. “Not long.”

He tries to think how long it’s been since he spoke to Tony last. God, it’s been at least a week. Dread fills his stomach as he pictures Tony being at AIM’s mercy for that long. He hopes it wasn’t that long. Natasha left for her mission two days ago, so it can’t have been too long, he hopes. “Tony?”

Tony sighs. He looks everywhere but at Bucky. “Three days. I got back this morning.”

Bucky nods. So that explains Natasha and Iron Man’s sudden mission. He wishes someone would have told them Tony was missing. He wishes Coulson would have brought them in to help look for Tony. Maybe they could have found him sooner and kept Tony from getting hurt.

He studies the bruises on Tony’s face. Each one feels like a failure.

“I know you have a bodyguard,” Bucky says. “But next time, maybe one of us could come with you? I’ve been told I look pretty intimidating in a tux. A little more inconspicuous than that big metal robot.”

Tony scoffs and turns away again. “Don’t worry about it, Barnes. Iron Man’s got it covered.”

“You got hurt,” Bucky says, like that’s all the reason he needs to bring the full force of the Avengers down on someone. To Bucky, it is.

“It’s fine,” Tony says. “I’m fine.”

“You’re injured and you look like you could fall over from a stiff wind. When’s the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?”

Tony frowns and taps at his keyboard. The lack of answer is answer enough.

“Tony.”

Tony’s fingers drum against his desk. He’s obviously fighting a pout, which shouldn’t be as adorable as it is. “I have work to do,” Tony answers finally.

“Says who?”

“SHIELD needs this data analyzed.” Tony waves vaguely at the screen. “There’s more to AIM’s plans than building a killer robot. That seems way too trivial to go to the trouble of kidnapping me.”

Bucky leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “Did Fury tell you to do it right now? Did he give you a time limit?” Tony frowns, which is as good as saying no. “Coulson? Hill?”

“Look, I just need-”

“To go to bed,” Bucky finishes. Tony opens his mouth to protest. “I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you if I have to.”

Tony does pout then. He crosses his arms and stares at his screens in a huff. JARVIS helpfully fades the screens into sleep mode. DUM-E rolls over, beeping happily while trailing the blanket Tony keeps on the couch in the lab.

The sigh Tony lets out is explosive and frustrated. He runs a hand through his hair and turns to Bucky with eyes far too wide and vulnerable. “I don’t know if I can,” Tony admits softly.

“Do you want me to stay with you?”

Tony shakes his head. His faces flames pink and he turns away. “God, no. I’m not a child.”

“I never said you were. But you’re not the only person in this tower that occasionally has trouble sleeping. Steve’s done it for me, and I’ve done it for Steve and Natasha. Sometimes you just need to know that you’re safe.”

For a moment, it seems like Tony’s going to give in, but some insecurity makes him shake his head. “No. It’s fine. I think I’m just going to crash down here with the bots.”

“Okay.” Bucky stands and makes a shooing motion. “Let’s go.”

Tony shakes his head but humors Bucky. They walk the short distance to the couch. DUM-E carefully lays the blanket over Tony’s chest. Bucky makes sure Tony’s got a pillow plus a bottle of water and Aspirin nearby for when he inevitably wakes up sore from sleeping on the couch. He tugs the blanket over to cover Tony’s legs and shoulder.

He wants to linger but Tony already said he didn’t want Bucky to stay. “Hey.”

Tony blinks up at him. It’d be adorable if Tony wasn’t exhausted and hurting.

“I’m just a few floors away. We all are. You need anything, and I mean it, you just say the word and JARVIS will let us know.”

“I’m fine. Go away.” The last word is mumbled into the blanket. JARVIS dims the lights as Tony’s eyes slide shut.

“Night, doll,” Bucky whispers, too softly for Tony to hear. He waits until he’s in the elevator heading back up to the common floor to ask JARVIS, “You’ll let me know if he needs anything?”

“Of course, Master Barnes.”

At least he knows Tony’s creations are always looking after him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky worries that Iron Man isn't a good enough bodyguard for Tony. Tony finds something disturbing in AIM's files.

“We need to talk.” Bucky crosses his arms and stands firmly in Natasha’s way.

She rolls her eyes and steps around him, heading into the briefing room. “Really? What about?”

“You know what.” Bucky is not pouting. Absolutely not. Natasha drops into her usual seat and turns, arching an eyebrow up at him. Bucky drops into the seat next to her. “You should have told us.”

Natasha pretends to study her nails. “Wasn’t my call.”

“He’s our teammate.”

Natasha shoots him a sharp glance. “Tony is not an Avenger.”

“He’s still part of the team,” Bucky insists. “He houses us, he makes all our gear, handles tech support on our missions...”

“Who are we talking about?” Clint asks as he drops into the chair on Natasha’s other side. Natasha and Clint share a look. Clint nods. “Right, of course, Tony. He’s like our team mascot, if the mascot owned the team and had a penchant for building robots and making things explode.”

A strange noise makes them all turn to look at Iron Man. He’s got one hand against the wall and seems to be having some sort of coughing fit, which is odd for a robot, but they’ve all heard the sass Tony programmed into JARVIS.

“You alright there, Tin Man?” Clint asks. “Got a little oil in your gears?”

“Fine.” Iron Man waves them off. “I’m fine. Go back to your... whatever you were talking about.”

“Actually...” Bucky stands and follows Iron Man around the giant table. “I wanted to talk to you about Tony.”

Iron Man makes a strange squeaking noise. “You what?”

“I know you’re his bodyguard, but there are situations where it might be worthwhile to let the Avengers help as well. Tony told me he’d been kidnapped,” he shoots a pointed glare at Natasha.

“Wait, what?” Bruce pauses in the doorway, blocking the entrance for Thor and Steve behind him. The two men take a step back as Bruce’s skin flushes green.

Iron Man turns quickly, holding up his hands in an attempt to stall a Hulk-out. “He’s fine. Mr. Stark is fine. It was only a few days.”

Bruce shoots out a hand to steady himself. The doorframe creaks. “Only a few days?” Bruce’s eyes narrow as he looks between Bucky and the spy twins. “And no one told us?”

“Mr. Stark prefers that such matters are handled discreetly in-house.”

Bruce growls under his breath and turns, pushing past Steve and Thor to stalk off before the Hulk makes an appearance.

Iron Man sighs. He rubs a metal hand over his face in a very human gesture. “It’s not a big deal.”

“I disagree,” Steve says, finally adding his two cents to the conversation. “Stark Industries may not hold weapons contacts anymore but his work with SHIELD still gives him access to a large amount of sensitive information. The security risk alone-”

“Excuse you,” Iron Man snarls, his voice high in outrage on his creator’s behalf. “He’s not some wet behind the ears rookie. He’s been a SHIELD agent longer than you’ve been out of the ice. He was practically raised as a SHIELD agent and if you think he’d just roll over and spill secrets as soon as some AIM goon raises his voice-”

“He doesn’t have the training-” Steve tries.

“Bullshit. Just because he’s not a god or a jacked-up soldier doesn’t mean-”

“All I meant was-”

Thor steps between them with hands raised. “Perhaps a better way to phrase the Captain’s concern is not that we worry for the secrets that young Anthony keeps but for his safety.”

“He’s not some child that needs babysitting. He has a bodyguard. Me, if you somehow missed that, the highly capable war machine. And the actual War Machine when he’s in town.”

“No one’s saying that,” Bucky quickly interjects. “I just wish the rest of us had been informed. Maybe we could have helped. One of us could have gone with him to the fundraiser. I know having a robot at those kinds of functions doesn’t go over well, but some of us are pretty good with undercover work. Or we could have helped look for him after he was taken. I just hate the thought of him being in AIM custody for three days while we were completely unaware. I don’t like it when he’s hurt, is all.”

“I... you... what?” Iron Man’s face remains an inexpressive mask, but his body language is remarkably human, displaying the slumped shoulders and tilted head of confusion. “You... really feel that way?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “We all do.” The others chorus their agreement.

“W-What?” For a robot, Iron Man sounds incredibly unsure.

“If you’re all done,” Coulson’s even tone interrupts as he strides into the room, a thick tablet clutched in his hands.

Bucky claps Iron Man on the shoulder. “Just think about it okay.”

Iron Man’s gaze lingers on him as they all take their seats. Coulson pulls up images of a tall robot being constructed in a lab. “This is what AIM had Mr. Stark working on.”

Bucky’s hands clench into fists so tight the metal of his left hand groans.

“What do we know about their ultimate goal?” Steve asks.

Right. Meeting. Bucky should be paying attention to their latest threat but all he can think about is Tony at their mercy.

“We’re still analyzing the data,” Coulson says. He nods toward Iron Man, who shifts in his chair to sit straight. It’s such a human move that it makes Bucky marvel at Tony’s ingenious programming.

“We know this robot,” Iron Man gestures to the screen, “was only the prototype. A proof of concept, if you will. From what we’ve analyzed, their final intended product is much larger and full of firepower. We also know they weren’t working alone.”

“They weren’t?” Steve asks.

Coulson taps his tablet and a series of documents with AIM’s letterhead appear. The contents overlap but the pieces he can make out paint an unhappy picture. Someone provided AIM funding for five robots. The list of armaments make Iron Man look like a toy.

Clint whistles. “That’s not good.” He turns and holds up his hand to Natasha. “Congrats on shutting these guys down.” She rolls her eyes but accepts the requested high-five.

“Are we sure they didn’t pass anything along to their buyer?” Steve asks.

“We’re sure.” Iron Man says. “Mr. Stark never finished the design before we retrieved him. AIM’s servers were wiped and transferred to SHIELD’s database. We’ve accounted for all the outgoing transmission and nothing went out before the wipe.”

“Good job,” Steve said. Bucky wishes Tony were here so Iron Man could share the praise.

Coulson turns to Iron Man with a bemused sort of look. “Yes, please pass our thanks to Mr. Stark and wishes for a swift recovery.”

There’s something off about Iron Man’s tone as he mumbles a quick, “Yeah, sure.”

Bucky manages to focus for the rest of the meeting while they recap the Avengers’ latest mission and talk strategy for the inevitable next time Doom throws a tantrum while the Fantastic Four are out of town. Clint’s suggestion of locking Doom and the Richards in a closet until they figure their shit out doesn’t go over well with Coulson, but Bucky thinks it has merit. There’s way too much unresolved sexual tension between those three.

Bucky grabs Iron Man before he can disappear to whenever he stays in between missions. “Just think about it, okay? We want to help.”

Iron Man nods and says nothing as he walks away.

* * *

“Sir, Doctor Banner has been waiting to speak to you.”

Tony groans, the sound of it echoing inside the suit. He steps down from the disassembly platform and scrubs a hand across his face. “Of course. Great.”

He glances down at his ratty t-shirt and jeans. No way he could make it look like he’d been in a meeting without sneaking up to his room to change. Which, doable, but that would mean leaving Bruce to stew a while longer.

“How long’s he been waiting?”

“Slightly over an hour, sir.”

Tony’s whole body slumps backward as he groans again. “Fuck.” Why do SHIELD meetings have to take so goddamn long? And then Bucky had to catch him after and Tony really can’t say no to Bucky at all, for anything.

He takes his private elevator up one floor to his primary lab. He’s pleased to see the glass walls are blacked out in privacy mode. He grabs a blanket and a pillow, messes up his hair, and flops artfully on the couch. He doesn’t even have to pretend to be exhausted. Nightmares woke him up twice last night before he gave up and headed down to his private lab to work on ways to call the suit to him without needing the suitcase version nearby.

It’s tempting to let his fake nap turn into a real one, but he can guess why Bruce has been camped outside his door. “Okay, JARVIS, send him in.”

“Jesus, Tony,” Bruce says as he crosses the room in quick strides. He’s got his medical kit with him, which means this is more than a social visit. He’s come to play doctor, and not the fun kind. “What’d they do to you?”

Tony sits up slowly. It’s a lot harder than it should be. He may have slightly underestimated just how tired he really is. “I’m fine. Really.”

He lets Bruce twist his face side-to-side and rub some cream on his black eye. As much as he complains—loudly and repeatedly—it’s nice having someone fuss over him. It means Bruce cares and Tony hasn’t had a whole lot of people in his life who’ve done that. Bruce’s fussing is different than Bucky’s fussing the day before. It’s a lot more tactile. Tony will never admit it on pain of death, but he’s a glutton for soft, casual touches.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Bruce mutters. He’s pissed but not Hulk-level. Tony’s probably one of the few people on Earth who can tell the difference. “Iron Man should have protected you. What good is a bodyguard if he can’t keep you from getting hurt?”

That stings. It feels like a failure. Like he’s the failure, not the robot everyone assumes Iron Man is.

The worst part is that he can’t even point out that he’s perfectly capable of defending himself because none of the Avengers know he’s Iron Man. It’s for the best, really. No one wants to go into battle with childish, playboy Tony Stark at their side. But Iron Man? Iron Man is a hero, someone Captain America calls his friend and a valued member of the Avengers.

Iron Man is everything Tony Stark is not and never will be.

“What did they want this time?”

Tony shrugs, wincing as it pulls at the bruises on his back and shoulders. “What does everyone want? Weapons and robots, of course. It’s the only thing I’m good for.”

Bruce sighs. He settles on the couch next to Tony, not touching but close enough that they could if Tony leaned over slightly. “You’re worth more than that, Tony, and you know it.”

He carefully leans back and stares at the ceiling. “It doesn’t feel like that.”

“I have no doubt your greatest creations are yet to come.”

Tony tilts his head to look at Bruce. “You don’t think Iron Man is my greatest creation?”

Bruce snorts. “Iron Man is a smart tin can.”

“It’s an advanced learning AI with a robotic body,” Tony corrects. That earns him a smile from Bruce, warm enough that it makes Tony smile back.

“Regardless,” Bruce says, “hardly spectacular. The arc reactor? That’s pretty great.”

His fingers twitch as he suppresses the urge to tap the reactor sitting in his chest. No one’s supposed to know it’s there, not even Bruce.

Times like this, when Bruce is being warm and supportive, make Tony wish he could tell Bruce. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Bruce. He trusts Bruce enough to fight alongside the Hulk and share his lab but it’s different, trusting someone with his literal heart. He can’t trust anyone with that. Obie taught him that.

Tony exhales a long sigh and slides lower on the couch.

“Why don’t you come upstairs?” Bruce asks. “I’ll make dinner. Clint’s probably already picking a movie. It’ll help take your mind off things.”

They both know he’s not going to, but it’s nice that Bruce still asks. Tony knows the others don’t want him around and he’s not going to subject the Avengers to his presence when they’re all still tired from yesterday’s battle and today’s debrief.

“No thanks,” Tony says. He waves vaguely toward his primary workstation. “I’ve idled away enough of the day. I should get some work done. Might call it an early night.”

“Okay, Tony.” Bruce squeezes Tony’s shoulder lightly. “Try to get some actual rest, okay? You’ve been through a lot. You need time to recover.”

He makes an agreeable noise and levers himself off the couch. Now that he’s thinking about work, there really is a lot he needs to do. He’s still got terabytes of data from AIM to comb through. He needs to figure out who bankrolled them and why. Plus, there’s the increasing pile of emails from Pepper of things he missed at SI, things he has to read and sign, and specs to approve. He’s never been happier he appointed Pepper CEO instead of taking over than he is now.

He doesn’t hear Bruce leave or Bruce’s fond, “Make sure he sleeps, JARVIS.” Nor does he hear JARVIS’s many reminders to go to sleep. He’s in too deep.

* * *

Tony spends every second of the time he’s not at SHIELD or SI combing through the AIM data. He’s had to blow off the team, both as Tony and Iron Man, so he can work on it. He tells them he’s recuperating from his kidnapping, and they believe that. He is, in a way. He’ll feel safer once he knows what AIM was up to.

It’s so late that it could be morning, a week after his kidnapping, when Tony finds something in the AIM data that makes him sit back from the keyboard and stare. He’s been digging through lines and lines of code and he thinks—no, he knows—he’s on to something. Something big. Something explosive.

There’s a name in the AIM files that he recognizes. Pierce. Someone high up at SHIELD. The actual reference is encoded so Tony has no idea if they’re talking about a planned hit or just a list of known SHIELD agents. There’s a reference to a soldier too, which makes him think of military contracts. Pierce was friends with Obie, back when Obie ran Stark Industries.

He’s so close he can taste it. So close he’s sitting on the edge of his chair, tapping frantically, barely giving the words time to appear on the screen before he’s flipping to the next section, fighting some seriously high-level encryption that’s mutating as he hacks away at it. It’s almost better than fighting, than flying. He’s a live wire sending off sparks of brilliance and he’s got it; he’s got this encryption beat. He’s keystrokes away from victory and already feeling smug.

One of his side screens starts rendering the document he’s decrypting. He’s only getting fragments of the whole, little incongruent bits of data that don’t make sense yet. He catches a fraction of a logo and his heart stops, stutters, an instinctual fear from years of old war stories. It can’t be possible but it’s staring right at him.

He needs to see the whole thing. He needs it now. His fingers make a harsh cacophony of noise as he helps along the code, urging it faster and faster.

Which is, of course, when the entire system shuts down, throwing the lab into darkness. His frustrated screech wakes the bots from their chargers. DUM-E wheels over so fast, he bumps a table out of the way and sends the latest prototype of Clint’s bow flying across the floor. U whirls in circles in distress.

“Fuck,” Tony says, with feeling. He runs both hands through his hair, making it stick up like the crazy mad scientist he sometimes feels like.

The lights flicker back online. Tony pats DUM-E on the strut and stares up at the ceiling, worry eating his insides and twisting him into knots worse than a Picasso.

“Apologies, sir,” JARVIS says. “We appear to have experienced a power surge. Diagnostics are currently running.”

Tony releases a long breath. JARVIS is still here. He’s okay.

The screens flicker back to life, running through the familiar boot sequence. His home screens appear, and he gestures his way through folders back to the files he’d been working on. Except they’re not there.

“JARVIS?” Tony swipes through subfolders. Everything else seems intact but the AIM data is gone.

“I’m not sure how this happened, sir. It appears our security has been compromised.”

No. Absolutely not. He won’t stand for this.

“Please tell me SHIELD still had their copy.”

There’s a worrying pause before JARVIS responds. The hesitancy in his voice is so human, it makes Tony proud of his creation and how far they’re come together, even if it’s not the answer he wants to hear.

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

Tony sighs. He scrubs a hand over his face. He’s tired. Exhausted, really. He wants to go to bed but there’s no way he’s sleeping, not when there’s a security vulnerability in the code that runs the building he sleeps in.

“Start another pot of coffee, J, it’s gonna be a long night. And get Fury on the line. We need to talk somewhere secure.”

“It’s three in the morning, sir. I suppose I can’t convince you to get some rest?”

”Not a chance. Let’s start at the firewall. I want to know how those fuckers got in.”

His screens fill with code and Tony lets the lines upon lines of commands pull him in.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA strikes back.

“You look like shit, Stark.”

Tony pulls down his sunglasses and shoots Fury an unamused look. “You always say the nicest things, Uncle Nicky. Really, just so good for my self-esteem. If Aunt Peggy were here-”

“I’m not here to stroke your ego,” Fury said, cutting him off with a scowl. He leans his hip against the bridge railing next to Tony. “I want to know why all the data you took from AIM has been wiped from our systems.”

Tony groans and throws a handful of pellets to the koi fish swimming below. “They hacked us. Or me, specially. They must have known I was going to dump their systems because they were prepared. I don’t think they expected me to get as much of their data as I did, because there was definitely stuff in there that I don’t think they wanted me to see.”

“Is that the reason for the sudden cloak and dagger?”

“I thought this spy stuff was your jam.” He turns to lean against the railing and tosses the rest of the food over his shoulder. “I found something. You’re not going to like it.”

Fury crosses his arms. “I don’t like being kept waiting either.”

Tony takes a deep breath. He scans the park. There are other people nearby, running the trails and having picnics on the lawn. No one’s near enough to overhear, at least not unless they’re a super soldier, but even that might be pushing it.

“HYDRA,” he says, letting the word hang like a noose between them.

“That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Could have sworn we got rid of them with Agent Barnes.” Fury stares at Tony through the side of his sunglasses. Tony’s feeling a touch nostalgic. It’s rare that he sees Fury out of his SHIELD leathers these days.

He misses the simpler days when he was living with Peggy and foisted off on rookie agents to babysit him as a hazing ritual. Coulson will always be his favorite thanks to their shared love of Captain America, the Howling Commandos, and trashy reality TV.

“Cut off one head, right? They’re not as dead as we thought. I found their logo in the AIM files, right before the trojan they planted in the data dump wiped everything off both SHIELD’s server and my own.”

“Old research?”

“No. Something new. I found a few current SHIELD employees mentioned in the same files. Pierce, Rumlow, Sitwell, maybe a dozen others.”

“Targets?”

Tony shrugs. “Something. I didn’t finish decoding. I triggered the trojan when I decrypted one of the files in the folder about their giant robot project.”

“It would be best to keep this between the two of us for now.”

Tony hesitates. He doesn’t want to keep something like that a secret from the team. He can only imagine how Steve and Bucky are going to react. Bucky should know. Out of all of them, Bucky deserves to know. “Nick...”

“No. They got into our system. There’s no telling what they have access to. JARVIS?”

“Clean.” Tony sighs and stares up into the cloudy sky. “Took hours. I’m way past fumes now. My blood’s just coffee and Red Bull. But JARVIS is secure. Stronger, better, faster. All that.”

Fury nods. “Good. I want you working on rebuilding SHIELD’s firewalls. This can’t happen again.”

Tony quirks an eyebrow at Fury. “You know I haven’t slept in forty-something hours, right?”

“This is important, Stark. Power nap then get back at it.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Stark, huh? You only call me that when you’re pissed or scared.” He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “Fine. I’ll get started as soon as I get back, but JARVIS is going to lock me out once I hit seventy-two. Just so you know.”

“I’ll send Romanov with coffee.”

Tony makes a face. “God, don’t do that. She’ll eat my spleen. I’ve got robots for the coffee. Just let the Avengers know Iron Man’s on assignment or something. I’ll let Pepper know to clear my schedule.”

Fury steps close. His hand is warm on Tony’s shoulder, gripping tight. It eases the knots of tension Tony’s been carrying around. “I’ve got faith in you. Get it done.”

Fury stalks off. Tony imagines the swirl of his leather coat as he turns. He feels warm in a way that has nothing to do with the afternoon sun.

Once Fury’s out of sight, Tony slides his sunglasses back in place and strolls off in the other direction. He taps his earpiece. “You got that, JARVIS? I need a Hide and Seek protocol on Barnes.” There’s no way he can look at Bucky and not spill his guts. Not after everything HYDRA put him through. No, the best option is avoidance. “Keep the lab on lockdown too.”

“What should I tell Sergeant Barnes when he inevitably asks?”

Tony smiles and shakes his head. It’s nice how Bucky likes to check in on him, but right now he can’t afford it. “Priority SHIELD business. He won’t ask questions, and hey, it’s actually true.”

* * *

A flashing red light to Tony’s right brings him out of his coding haze. He leans back from his keyboard and scrubs a hand over his face. “What is it, JARVIS?”

“The Avengers have Assembled, sir.”

Tony bites back a groan. He’s slept maybe ten hours in the last four days and he’s only half done on the security overhaul for SHIELD. It’s not just the firewall he has to rewrite but the file structure and multi-level encryption. When he’s done it won’t matter if someone dumps the entire SHIELD database online, no one’s going to crack it without the proper keys.

“Do they need me?” He asks, voice laden with exhaustion. He shouldn’t go out like this, but he will if he absolutely has to. He’s hoping he doesn’t have to.

“Unfortunately, it appears so.”

“Show me.”

Tony’s screens shift, lines upon lines of code falling away to be replaced with live video feeds. He won’t have to go far. The battle’s only a few blocks away and it doesn’t look good. Massive robots are lumbering around the city, heading for Stark Tower according to JARVIS’s projections.

He knows those robots. He knows those robots intimately.

“Fuck me running.” Tony pushes away from his desk and heads for the entrance to his secret lab and the assembly platform containing his armor. “What’s the Avengers’ status?”

The video feed follows him. “Two of the five robots have been defeated. Agent Romanov is down. Sergeant Barnes is injured. Iron Man’s assistance is required for a positive outcome.”

Tony’s heart leaps into his throat as he watches Natasha get tossed. He runs the rest of the way to the platform.

“Get me out there, JARVIS. Now!”

The suit folds around him. The last screw locks in place and Tony’s blasting out of the Tower as fast as he can go. He hopes he’s not too late.

* * *

The robot rips Natasha off its back and throws her. Bucky turns his back on the one he’d been helping Thor crush and sprints, heart beating too fast and too loud. He worries that he’s not close enough, that he won’t be fast enough. Desperation gives him an extra burst of speed. He launches himself off a crushed car and grabs Natasha out of the air. He curls around her, tucking her head against his chest.

They hit the ground hard. There’s no time to recoup. The robot that Natasha had been trying to rewire is on them, big hammer-like fists coming down on them. He barely gets his arm up in time. The force of the blow pushes him into the asphalt. It cracks beneath him and Natasha’s eyes don’t open.

Thor’s busy with his own robot. Hulk roars in the distance, still chasing after the first robot to engage them. He has no idea where Clint and Steve are, only that there were five robots initially and three are still up.

The robot tries to smash them again. They really need to step up the recruitment drive. They could use a few extra hands right now. Maybe the spider kid’s looking for work.

He screams when the robot hits his arm a third time. Something in his arm breaks, loud enough that Bucky’s sure the whole team heard it. Steve and Clint talk over each other, trying to get his attention and find out what’s happening, but Bucky can’t get the words out fast enough. He stares at the robot’s arms raising over its head. He wraps his flesh arm around Natasha, ready to run.

“Need a hand?” A familiar voice announces over the comms.

The robot tumbles away in a blur of red and gold. He won’t deny his sigh of relief. “I need a medic at my location,” Bucky says. He picks Natasha up one-handed and deposits her in the doorway of the nearest stable building. It takes him too long to get his glove off. Too long when she could be... No. She has a pulse. Her eyes open as he pulls his hand away.

Thank God. She’s going to be all right.

He turns. Iron Man’s going after the robot hard. Metal clashes with metal. Usually, Iron Man fights from a distance but he’s toe-to-toe punching the robot like a machine enraged. A loud whiz pulls his attention back to Thor’s fight. Hawkeye’s on the roof behind the robot. He releases a second arrow as the first explodes in the robot’s neck. Thor cheers and uses the swing of his hammer to pull himself up to head height. The second arrow cripples the robot’s right leg. It goes down on a knee and Thor brings his hammer down on the robot’s neck, right where Hawkeye shot it.

The robot crumbles. Bucky grins. The tide is turning. They’ve got this. His arm is sparking, but it’s nothing Tony can’t fix later. He stands protectively over Natasha and watches the fight. Iron Man’s armor is dented but he’s still going, firing repulsor blast after repulsor blast. Watching Iron Man fight is amazing. Steve is charging toward the robot to assist. He’s got his shield loose, ready to throw. Thor’s swinging his hammer, both waiting for Iron Man to clear.

The robot grabs Iron Man’s arm, pushing one repulsor up and away but Iron Man flips, turning in a way that would be impressive for a human but still looks slick from a robot. The repulsors in his boots kick off, sending the giant robot stumbling back. Iron Man hits the ground and rolls to his feet, not staying down more than a second before he’s shooting back in the air.

Steve pulls back his arm for the throw then falters as a sickening crunch pulls Iron Man to a stop. The third robot has returned. It wraps both hands around Iron Man and squeezes.

Bucky takes off running. Even with a broken arm, he needs to do something. Iron Man is silent over the comms, but Bucky can hear screams coming from the suit. Is that... Is there a person in there?

The robot uses its crushing grip to slam Iron Man into the ground in a sickening parody of one of Hulk’s signature moves. He can’t hear the screaming anymore. Bucky’s blood rushes to his ears, drowning out everything around him

Iron Man is tossed aside like a toy, right into the side of a brick building. He crumples to the ground and doesn’t move. Lightning strikes the third robot, temporarily immobilizing it as Steve’s shield digs a chunk out of the second robot’s neck. Bucky jumps into the fray, charging at the nearest robot. He loses track of everything except the feeling of metal yielding under his fist. He’s doing more damage to his arm, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t stop, not even when the giant robot stops moving, not when his punches push through to the street. If he stops, he’ll have to look. If he stops, he’ll know that Iron Man’s pilot is dead.

Hulk roars. The last robot is torn in two, each half clutched in a meaty paw. Hulk lumbers toward Iron Man and lets out a confused roar. He doesn’t understand. Bucky’s arm hurts so much he feels like he’s the one torn in two, but the pain isn’t enough to keep him from stumbling to his feet.

Thor’s already there, uncaring of the privacy for Iron Man’s pilot. Pieces of armor fall to the side. God, he was right. Iron Man isn’t a robot, he’s a pilot in a suit. There’s blood on the metal. So much blood.

Why didn’t Stark tell them? Why did Iron Man let them think he was a robot?

“I need a med team now,” Steve orders. There’s a desperation in his voice that Bucky hasn’t heard since the war. “Threat neutralized. Prepare evac. Nearest hospital on standby. Iron Man is down. I repeat, Iron Man is down.”

Bucky collapses to his knees next to Thor, already reaching for the armor on Iron Man’s chest before reality catches up with him. Iron Man’s helmet is off. Even through the blood there’s no mistaking the man inside the armor. “Tony?”

“What?” Hawkeye’s voice is doubled as he jogs up to them.

Tony Stark is Iron Man. Iron Man is Tony Stark.

God, Tony looks so young. He’s always been young. Bucky knows that. His age was one of the reasons Steve hadn’t wanted to make Tony a full Avenger. All this time, Tony had been right there, fighting beside them. Steve had belittled Tony for staying safe on the Hellicarrier while they’d fought the Chitauri army, but Tony had been the one to take that fucking nuke into space.

It all feels so stupid now.

Natasha calls Tony’s vitals over the comms. When did she get here? Bucky almost turns back to check the building he’d left her at, but he can’t look away from Tony. He doesn’t dare look away for a single second, afraid of what might happen when he does.

Natasha gets confirmation of a med team en route but it’s too late because she loses his pulse. Tony stops breathing and Bucky does too. He falls back onto his heels, as helpless now as he was stuck inside the Winter Soldier’s programming. But Hulk’s roar—and he is roaring, voicing the agony they all feel—isn’t going to bring Iron Man back like it had in the Battle of New York.

Thor and Steve are pushed to the side as Natasha starts chest compressions and Clint tries to breathe life back into Tony. He can’t tell if it works. Tony’s so pale and still.

The SHIELD medics take over. They rip apart Tony’s t-shirt—Bucky winces because he’s seen Tony in that before, several times, and he thinks it’s one of Tony’s favorites—and there, hiding beneath the thin fabric is the real arc reactor. It’s embedded in Tony’s fucking chest and he doesn’t want to know why. What happened to Tony to cause that?

The reactor flickers every time they shock Tony, until finally it catches and holds. The medics press an oxygen mask to Tony’s face. They carry Tony away and Bucky follows. They all do. They don’t look back at the destruction their battle caused. They don’t look away from Tony, not even when he’s packed into an ambulance and whisked away.

Coulson touches Bucky’s arm, bringing him back to the present enough to let Coulson lead him to an SUV. They split in two groups. SHIELD agents drive them to the hospital. Natasha, Steve, and Bruce are pulled away into exam rooms. Bucky’s herded to a private waiting room where a SHIELD tech opens his arm. He doesn’t pay attention to what the tech’s doing. He doesn’t really care. His gaze is fixed on the secure doors leading deeper into the hospital, waiting for someone to tell him Tony’s dead. He knows better than to think there’s any other outcome, not with the beating Tony took. For him and Natasha. Tony died saving them.

Clint falls into a line of chairs opposite, perching on the end of the row like he’s ready to spring back in action at a moment’s notice. Bruce slumps next to Clint, head in his hands out of complete exhaustion and wearing blue hospital scrubs. Thor paces behind Bucky, guarding them from outside intervention. He’s not sure where Coulson disappeared to.

Steve joins them after thirty minutes. He’s got a few bandages, but his wounds are already healing, just like Bucky’s. He sits in the chair next to Bucky and offers his hand. Bucky takes it. He needs something to ground him and Steve’s always been a constant.

He’s not sure when Natasha joins them. He blinks and she’s on his left side. Her right arm is in a sling and thick bandages peer out from under her shirt. She says nothing, only stares at the doors in silent dedication. The SHIELD tech is gone. Bucky can move his arm without pain, but it still needs the kind of repairs only Tony can do.

A familiar woman walks in, heralded by a sharp staccato of heels on tile. Bucky’s only spoken to her twice, but he still recognizes the infamous Pepper Potts.

“Ms. Potts.” Steve stands to greet her.

Maybe she has news. Maybe they told her what they wouldn’t tell the team.

“I need your signatures.” She holds out a tablet with a thumb-reader at the bottom.

Steve frowns. “Is now really the time to-”

“Do you want to see him?” Ms. Pott’s voice is sharp when she cuts him off. Her eyes are red but she’s all business. “Only authorized personnel are allowed when he’s...” She chokes back tears and looks away for a minute. “You have to be added to the authorized list.”

“Yes.” There’s no doubt in Bucky’s mind. He needs to see Tony. He needs to know he’s alive.

“Then sign.” Bucky grabs the tablet before anyone else, though he can’t focus on the words enough to know what she wants him to sign. “I haven’t seen him yet,” she adds, sounding as distraught as Bucky feels. “He’s still in surgery. He’ll be taken to a secure ward when...” She takes a deep, steadying breath. “Once he’s out of surgery. He’s too stubborn to die.”

She says the words with so much conviction that he believes it. She believes Tony will pull through. He feels some of that hope catch fire inside of him.

Maybe, just maybe, God will be kind to them, and Tony won’t die.

God is never kind to him.

“This,” she points to the tablet, “adds you to the list of SHIELD agents authorized to know Iron Man’s identity. It means you can stay.” Her eyes sweep the room. “All of you. Anyone who wants-” Bucky’s already signed and passed the tablet to Steve. She sets a manila folder on the table in front of them. “Those are printed copies of the agreement, for your records, along with a non-disclosure agreement regarding Iron Man and his identity. If anyone gives you a problem, my number’s inside along with a direct line to JARVIS. Agent Coulson is on point with SHIELD. He’s working on securing the surgery suite and recovery ward, but he knows you’re to be let through. Is there anything I can have sent up while you wait?”

Steve shakes his head. Normally after a mission, they’d head straight for the showers and the nearest food they can find. Usually there’s enough takeout waiting in the common room to feed an army. He always thought JARVIS ordered that, but maybe it was Tony. He never asked.

His stomach roils at the mere thought of food. There’s blood on his uniform but it barely registers.

Ms. Potts nods and retrieves the tablet from Thor, the last to sign. “I have some calls to make, but I’ll be just down the hall. The nurses can show you where to find me.”

They must make some motion of agreement because she offers them a weak smile and leaves with the tablet.

“You knew?” Steve asks.

Bucky opens his mouth, ready to deny it, then realizes Steve’s not looking at him. He turns.

Natasha nods once before confirming, “Yes, I knew.”

“How long?” Bucky’s not sure what difference the answer will make, but he needs to know.

“From the start,” Natasha says. “I’ve worked all of Tony’s extractions, even before Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan?” That was one of the worst kidnappings. Bucky shudders as he remembers the three months Tony had been missing.

“That’s when he built Iron Man.” She taps the center of her chest, right where the arc reactor is embedded in Tony’s flesh.

“The reactor...” Bruce says. “Why is it...?”

“Shrapnel. The reactor powers an electromagnet that keeps it from his heart.”

Bucky winces. He can’t imagine how much it must hurt having shrapnel floating around his chest. “They can’t remove it?”

Natasha shakes her head. “The remaining pieces are too small. Dr. Yinsen can tell you more.”

Bucky knows that name. Ho Yinsen, Tony’s personal doctor. He must be at the hospital, or at least on his way. Tony never lets anyone else treat him. Now Bucky understands why. Yinsen must know about Iron Man as well.

It stings that Tony never told him. Tony didn’t trust them with his secret identity. Bucky thought they were friends. He’d hoped they could be more than that, but maybe he’s misread the situation.

He has so many questions. It isn’t fair to Natasha to dump all of it on her. She was likely following orders, though whether those orders came from Fury or Tony remains to be seen. No, he needs to talk to Tony, when he’s better.

God, he hopes Tony recovers. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Tony dies.

* * *

Quick footsteps catch the attention of the few awake members of the team. Bucky glances up at the double doors to the surgery suite but the sound’s coming from the opposite direction. He turns, waking Steve and Natasha who’d been using his shoulders for pillows. Clint nudges Bruce while Thor pushes away from the wall he’d been dozing against.

He’s surprised to see Maria Hill march toward them, three armed SHIELD agents behind her. Bucky recognizes them as Coulson’s field team: Agents May, Ward, and Skye.

Steve rises to meet her. “What’s going on?”

“There’s been an incident,” Hill says without preamble. “Fury’s been assassinated.”

“What?” Natasha jerks to her feet and nearly falls. Bucky catches her before she can, steadying her with both hands on her waist until she can get her balance.

“When did this happen?” Clint asks.

“An hour ago, in DC.”

Steve takes a step forward. He’s not steady either but he’s got the serum and his own personal brand of stubbornness propelling him into action. “What can we-”

Hill thankfully cuts him off. She raises both hands to stall him. “Stand down. There’s nothing we can do yet. I’m assuming I can’t convince any of you to return to the Tower and rest?”

“We await news of our fallen comrade,” Thor says.

Bruce nods. “Until we know one way or the other... We need to stay.”

Hill sighs but doesn’t look surprised in the least. “I assumed you’d say that. Agents May, Ward, and Skye will be joining Coulson in securing the hospital.” She points through the double doors to the surgery suite. “May, you’re with Coulson. Ward and Skye, I want you watching reception.”

The three agents nod and split off to their assignments.

Natasha watches them leave with an arched eyebrow. “You think we’re targets?”

“I think Stark is,” Hill says. “Have any of you spoken with him recently?”

Bucky watches the others shake their heads. “He was in lockdown,” Bucky offers. “JARVIS wouldn’t let any of us in. Said it was priority SHIELD business.”

Hill frowns. “And he didn’t give any indication what he was working on?”

“None,” Steve answers. “I don’t think any of us have even seen him, let alone talked to him, in close to a week.”

“Great.” Sarcasm drips from Hill’s voice.

“What’s this about?” Steve asks the question that’s on all their minds.

Hill’s gaze sweeps the room, meeting each of them in turn. “Fury was killed because he was investigating something. Something big enough that he kept it close to his vest.”

“And you think whatever Tony was working on is related?” Bucky guesses.

“I damn well hope so,” Hill says. “As far as I can tell, Stark’s the last person to speak to Fury before he left for DC. Whatever it was that Fury was looking into, I’m hoping Stark can help us figure out what it was and who killed Fury.”

“Assuming Tony survives,” Natasha says, voice grim.

Hill grimaces. “Assuming he survives.”

* * *

They’re approaching six hours since Tony was taken into surgery when an older man of Middle Eastern descent follows Coulson into the waiting room. The man’s dressed in a white coat over fresh blue hospital scrubs. All eyes go to Coulson first, the tension in the room draining after Coulson nods.

Tony’s alive. Bucky slumps in his chair and blinks his eyes to keep the sudden moisture from falling. Fuck. Tony’s alive. Bucky would never have forgiven himself if Tony had died saving him. Natasha wouldn’t have either.

There are so many things he wishes he’d said to Tony. He wished he’d told Tony how he felt. He’s going to. As soon as he can talk to Tony alone, he’s going to tell Tony how he feels. No more waiting.

“My name is Dr. Ho Yinsen,” the stranger says. “I’m pleased to inform you that Mr. Stark will recover.”

“Thank you, doc,” Clint says, his voice thin with exhaustion and relief.

“When can we see him?” Bucky asks. Even if Tony’s not awake, he needs to see him. Just to be sure, to reassure himself that Tony’s still breathing.

Yinsen holds up a hand. “I’m afraid that will have to wait. Mr. Stark has been gravely injured. We’ve placed him in an induced coma for the time being, until his lungs have stabilized.”

“His lungs?” Bruce asks. He pushes his glasses up his nose with one finger and sits straighter, no doubt ready to memorize whatever information Yinsen’s about to give them about Tony’s condition.

“Mr. Stark broke several ribs,” Yinsen says. “Along with an arm and a leg. His rib punctured his left lung here.” Yinsen gestures to a spot an inch below where a man’s heart would be. “He’s been placed on a ventilator to help him breathe until his lung is healed. I’m afraid Mr. Stark will not be returning to his duties as Iron Man for quite some time.”

“No,” Steve shakes his head. “That’s okay. That’s fine. Whatever he needs to heal. We just want him to get better. He’s our family.”

God, if Tony could hear Steve right now, maybe he’d actually believe that the team cared about him. Bucky was going to make damn sure Tony knew it once he was recovered. No more hiding in the lab during team nights. Bucky will throw Tony over his shoulder and drag him if he has to.

“What happens now?” Natasha asks.

“Mr. Stark will be kept sedated for several days. Once we deem his lungs to be out of critical state, we’ll allow him to wake and reassess. He’s going to be confined to bed rest for at least a month. His casts will stay on for another two to four weeks after that. He’ll need physical therapy and I’ve already spoken with Mr. JARVIS. Mr. Stark will not be allowed access to the Iron Man suits until I’ve cleared him to return to duty.”

“I expect you all to help ensure Mr. Stark’s recovery isn’t hindered by his inability to stay out of Avengers business,” Coulson adds.

Steve nods. “We’ll remove Iron Man from the active roster until he’s cleared. We’ll make sure he focuses on recovery.”

Bucky grabs Steve’s arm, pulling Steve’s attention to him. He already knows trying to keep Tony out of Avengers business now that they know his real identity is going to go over like a lead balloon over the Hudson. “How about we keep him on support until he’s cleared? Iron Man’s a part of the team. It’s not fair to Tony to completely sideline him. He’s an Avenger.”

“But-”

Bucky shakes his head. “I’ll fight you on this, Steve. Don’t make me.”

“I think that’s a reasonable compromise, Agent Barnes,” Coulson says, overriding any further protest. “Now, I’ve arranged for Stark to be moved to a private room. You all are allowed access as part of his private security detail but I’m asking,” the stress Coulson put on the word suggested it was less an ask and more a demand, “that you limit yourselves to one visitor at a time. The rest of you need to recover as well. At home. In the Tower.”

The stern look Coulson sweeps over the room kills their protests.

“I’ll do it,” Bucky offers instantly. He wobbles when he levers himself to his feet.

Thor clasps his hand on Bucky’s right shoulder. “Nay, my friend. Allow me first vigil while you all recover your strength. I swear on my life, no harm shall come to him while you slumber.”

Bucky wants to argue but he knows he won’t be able to fight right now. If someone really is going to come after Tony for what he knows, Thor is their best defense.

“Hill and I will have agents stationed around the clock. We protect our own.”

Steve and Natasha keep step with Bucky as they slowly make their way back to the Tower. He would have turned around a dozen times if not for their presence. He knows he’s not the only one. Coulson may only want one of them in the room with Tony at a time, but he’s pretty sure they’re all going to be haunting the halls tomorrow.

He lays in his bed and stares at the ceiling for a long time, the memory of Tony’s broken body keeping him awake long into the night.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team visits Tony while he recovers and Bucky is ready to confess.

“Empathy,” Bucky reads, his voice bringing life to the otherwise silent hospital room, “evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout-”

Bucky pauses. There’s someone approaching the room. He waits, listening, then relaxes when he recognizes Steve’s familiar cadence. Seconds later, Steve knocks on the door.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says as he walks in. He’s in civilian clothes but he has his shield strapped to his back.

Bucky raises an eyebrow in silent question.

“JARVIS found something.”

Bucky jerks upright. “What?” It’s been six days since Tony’s accident. Six days since Fury was killed and they’ve hit dead end after dead end trying to figure out what Tony and Fury were up to.

“JARVIS and Bruce were able to back-trace the computer that wiped all the AIM data. Natasha and I are going to go check it out.” Steve shakes his head. “You’re never going to guess the source.”

Bucky frowns. “Where?” He’s hoping Steve doesn’t say Siberia or Germany.

“Camp Lehigh.”

“What?” Bucky’s frown deepens. In a way, that’s almost worse. He could see something coming out of the ruins of HYDRA but Camp Lehigh, where SHIELD was born? “Weren’t you stationed there?”

Steve nods. “I was.” He leans against the wall and crosses his arms. “Something stinks about this whole thing and I’m going to find out what. Just...” Steve runs a hand through his hair. “If something happens, I want you to stay with Tony. Keep him safe.”

Bucky leans back in his chair. “You know you don’t have to ask that.”

Steve shrugs. A hint of a smile graces his lips. “I know.” He pushes off the wall and crosses the room to squeeze Bucky’s shoulder. “He’s going to wake up. He’s going to be okay.”

Bucky’s sigh is explosive, like he’s been holding his breath ever since Iron Man went down. “If you say so.”

“I do.” Steve squeezes Bucky’s shoulder again. “I have to go. I just wanted to let you know so you don’t worry if I go off grid for a few days. We don’t know what we’re going to find, and I want to be prepared for the worst.”

Bucky brushes Steve’s hand off. “I got it, don’t worry about your punk ass. Now get out of here. Go save the day.

Steve gives him an honest grin and salutes. “You got it.” He offers one final wave and then he’s out the door.

Bucky sighs and turns to look at Tony. There’s no change. He didn’t expect there to be, but he keeps hoping that maybe today will be the day Tony wakes up. He’s about to start reading again when someone else knocks on the door. Unlike the Avengers, they don’t immediately enter.

“Come in,” Bucky calls. His hand settles on the gun he keeps holstered on his lower back.

Agent Ward steps in and closes the door behind him. “Sorry for the interruption. I saw the Captain leave. Any news?”

Bucky relaxes back in his chair. “Nothing worth the breath of telling it.”

Ward nods toward Tony. “How’s he doing?”

“Still the same.”

“No one’s really told us much. Have the doctors said anything about his prognosis?”

Bucky didn’t think Ward’s ever said two words to Tony, but they’re all a little shaken by recent events. If their situations were reversed, Bucky would be looking for any silver lining too.

“Nothing noteworthy yet. It’s more-”

Tony gasps, startling them both. The sound is muffled by the feeding tube down Tony’s throat, but Tony’s eyes are open. They’re wide and unfocused but they’re open. Finally. Fucking finally.

He ducks his head to muffle his relieved sob. He can’t fall apart right now. Not yet. Tony needs him.

Tony moans again. He’s making more sounds now, trying to talk around the tube. The heart monitor speeds up. That doesn’t seem good.

“Tony.” He stands so he can lean into Tony’s field of vision. Tony eyes dart wildly around the room. He’s confused and panicking. “Tony. You’re safe. It’s okay.” He places his hands on Tony’s shoulders as lightly as he can.

The touch ignites something in Tony. He screams. He thrashes as best he can with his casts, which only makes him scream more as the pain hits him. Ward moves back against the wall, watching but out of the way.

“Tony, stop!” Bucky doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to hurt Tony, but he also doesn’t want Tony to hurt himself. Where is safe to touch? Tony’s got so many bruises and broken bones. This is Bucky’s fault. It’s all Bucky’s fault.

“Sirs, I need you to leave. Both of you.” Nurse Ellyn gently pushes him aside. Bucky wants to stay, but this isn’t his area of expertise. He feels like he should be doing something to help, but the only way he can help Tony right now is by staying out of the way.

Ward disappears back to his post. Bucky slumps against the wall outside Tony’s room. Nurses rush in. Every time one of them opens the door, he flinches. He can’t stand the sounds Tony is making. He wants to cover his ears and block them out.

A familiar voice comes from down the hall, rapidly approaching. Bucky exhales slowly. Dr. Yinsen squeezes Bucky’s shoulder on his way past. Tony trusts Yinsen. That much is obvious when Tony stops screaming. Bucky doesn’t know if they sedated him or if Yinsen’s presence was enough to calm him. There’s a story there, he’s sure. He wants to ask Tony—later, much later—why Bucky didn’t have the same calming influence, but he doesn’t think he’ll like the answer.

The door opens again, minutes or maybe hours later. Dr. Yinsen stops next to Bucky and holds out his hand. “Come. I think we could both use a cup of coffee.”

Bucky lets Yinsen help him to his feet. He lingers, staring at Tony’s door. He doesn’t want to leave Tony alone.

“We’ll be but a moment,” Yinsen says. He briefly touches Bucky’s arm. “He’s been sedated for now.”

Bucky nods. He can’t bring himself to move.

“Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS’s voice comes from Bucky’s phone. “Mr. Barton will be arriving at your location momentarily.”

“We can wait,” Yinsen says serenely, like he’s not humoring Bucky’s paranoia and PTSD.

Clint rounds the corner. They silently salute each other. Bucky waits until Clint slips into Tony’s room before he allows Yinsen to draw him away.

Their walk to the cafeteria is silent. They collect their cups of coffee. Yinsen’s order is surprisingly like the way Tony takes his coffee—plenty of cream and sugar, with a drizzle of chocolate and a pinch of cinnamon.

“Mr. Stark introduced me to this,” Yinsen says, nodding toward the cup in his hand. “We didn’t have such luxuries when we first met, but after I came here with him, he insisted I try whatever coffee-flavored concoction he was drinking. I’m quite fond of mochas but in a pinch, even the worst coffee can be aided by enough cream and sugar.”

Bucky nods. “Tony has a ridiculous sweet tooth. He tries to hide it by adding the cream and sugar later, but we all know how he really takes his coffee.” It’s a ridiculous quirk to bring up, but Bucky finds strange comfort in knowing that little hidden bit of Tony’s personality.

“Indeed.” Yinsen drifts toward an out of the way table. “Sit with me?”

Bucky hesitates. “I should....”

“He will not miss you yet. We administered a round of sedatives to help him settle. He’ll sleep for a while.” Yinsen smiles briefly. “It’s comforting, knowing he has so many people that care for him now.”

Something in Yinsen’s words make Bucky curious enough that he slumps into a chair. “You say that like it’s surprising that we care at all.”

“A few years ago, it would have been. When we first met, I called Tony ‘the man who has everything and nothing.’”

Bucky frowns. “Tony has a lot of friends.”

Yinsen nods. “It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it? He’s always been popular. People flock to him because of his looks, his name, his genius, his money. Never for him. Alone in a crowd, if you will. Until he met you all.”

“But Pepper and Rhodey are his friends.”

“Indeed.” Yinsen smiles softly. “The thing about Stark is that he grew up with so much false affection that he doesn’t know how to recognize the people who truly love him. You can tell him many, many times and despite his genius, his mind still finds some way to negate it, tricking him into thinking it’s not real. Take Colonel Rhodes for example. He’s Stark’s oldest friend but Stark believes that Rhodes only humors him, first because of his position as Stark Industries’ military liaison and now for his reliance on the War Machine armor.”

Bucky frowns. “I thought SI started phasing out their weapons manufacturing after Howard died. That was years ago, long before Tony made the armor.”

“You are correct. Rhodes stays regardless of what Stark produces because he is Stark’s friend.”

“But Tony doesn’t see it that way.” Suddenly Tony’s standoffishness with, well, everyone makes a whole lot more sense. “Is that what he thinks?” Bucky asks. “That we’re not his friends?”

Yinsen nods. “He doesn’t believe anyone would like him once they knew his true self. Hence, he uses Iron Man as a mask. Iron Man was a blank slate, an unknown. It didn’t have the baggage of being a child prodigy or a weapons monger or a tabloid sensation. It let him be himself, free of speculation. He could do good and the world wouldn’t analyze his deeds, searching for the hidden agenda.”

Bucky’s sigh is explosive. He leans back in his chair. He feels like he’s been knocked out, metaphorically. There’s this whole new side to Tony he never realized existed and it’s dramatically altered everything he thought he knew. His whole world, as far as Tony Stark is concerned, has tilted on its axis.

“Can I share a story with you?” Yinsen says.

“Sure.” Bucky pauses. “Is this about Tony?”

“It is my story,” Yinsen says. He smiles. “But, yes, Mr. Stark is part of it.”

Bucky wants to know everything he can about Tony. He wants to understand Tony inside and out. He knows he never will. Tony’s too guarded for that, but he’ll take any scrap he can get.

“Why tell me?” Bucky asks. “Why not Steve or Bruce or Natasha?”

“Because you are here.” Yinsen shrugs. “I do not mind, if you feel the information could benefit them as well. But I’ve seen the way you look at Mr. Stark.”

Bucky scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m that obvious?”

“To me, yes. To him, unlikely. He’s no stranger to lust, but he has trouble recognizing real affection, as I’ve mentioned.”

Bucky sighs and waves a hand. “Tell me your story.”

Yinsen takes a long draw from his coffee. “I briefly met Tony Stark six years ago at a conference in Switzerland. I have never seen anyone as drunk as he was deliver such an impressive lecture on integrated circuits.”

Bucky frowns. “But he would have been-”

“Seventeen. Yes, I know. Even at that age, Tony Stark was a brilliant man, years ahead of his peers. That gap has only widened as he ages.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, unable to hide the fondness in his voice. “He’s something special.”

“Indeed.” Yinsen pauses for another long sip of his coffee. “When I met him next, he was dying. I did the best I could with the limited tools I had. I removed as much shrapnel as I safely could.

“That was when he got the arc reactor, isn’t it?”

Yinsen tilts his head. “He has not told you?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Natasha mentioned the shrapnel but not how it happened.”

“Ah. Of course. We had both been taken by the Ten Rings, a group of terrorists that controlled parts of Afghanistan. Stark’s convoy had been attacked and he’d been injured by one of the bombs his father had designed. Stark had not known it at the time, but his father’s business partner, a man Stark regarded as a father-figure, had paid the Ten Rings to kill him. They chose to capture him instead and tasked him with building weapons for them.”

“That’s... awful.”

“Indeed. To keep the remaining shrapnel from entering his heart, I placed an electromagnet here.” Yinsen taps the center of his chest.

Bucky nods. “The arc reactor.”

“That was the start of it, yes. The original version was powered by a car battery.” Bucky winces in sympathy. “Tony Stark took the crude materials we had available, scavenged from his own weapons, and built the first miniaturized arc reactor while trapped in a cave. It was and still is a marvel of engineering, but its creation has been overshadowed by the suit it powers.”

“The Iron Man armor.”

“Correct. I will not speak to the methods used to persuade Tony beyond to say they were not kind. I saved his life and he saved mine in turn. The things he experienced there will never leave him and when he is in medical care, such as now, those experiences overshadow reality. It was nothing you did that frightened him. He was already frightened, and your presence did not register in his waking nightmare. I was there and thus, for me, it is easier to reassure him.”

“Oh.” What is he supposed to say to that? What can he say? Tony was out of his mind with memories of what? Being tortured? Bucky would be a horrible person if he took that personally. He’s had his own share of traumatic flashbacks. He knows exactly what Tony must have been going through.

“What you are doing, what all of you are doing, being with him and caring for him... It eases the burdens on my heart. I hope it eases his as well. All I ask is that you have patience with him. He does not deal well with the limitations of his body. He has a long road ahead of him.”

Bucky sits up straight and nods, solemn. “I will. I promise.”

Yinsen pats Bucky’s hand. “I do not need your promise, only that you try.” He stands and tosses his empty cup in the trash. “Shall we?”

Bucky drains the last of his coffee and follows. They don’t speak on the way back. When they reach the room, Tony is once more sleeping. Clint glances up when they enter but does not pause his reading of _Return of the King_. Bucky settles on the couch to wait and listen.

* * *

Tony blinks slowly. His mind is hazy with the kind of fog that only comes from excessive alcohol or strong sedatives. He hasn’t been drunk since the awful disaster that was his twenty-first birthday, so he assumes he’s been drugged. He suppresses a groan. Who kidnapped him this time?

There’s a soft voice. At first, he thinks it’s his mother singing an old lullaby, like she did when he was sick as a child, but that can’t be right. His mother is dead. It takes him longer than it should to recognize the sounds as words.

“There are infinite numbers between zero and one. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between zero and two, or between zero and a million.”

He opens his eyes to blinding white. He blinks and blinks again, until the light diversifies, revealing objects and shapes that make sense to his fuzzy brain. He’s in a hospital room. That part is comforting at least. He has a vague recollection of being kidnapped, but that must have been a memory.

He’s weak. Too weak to do more than turn his head a fraction to the left, but that’s all he needs to see Pepper. The soft cadence of her voice comes to an abrupt halt. Her finger marks her place in the hardcover book in her lap. She looks him with tears in her eyes and lips pursed tight. It’s bad, then. Whatever happened to him, whatever landed him in the hospital, must have been awful to bring Pepper to tears.

He wants to make a joke about job hunting but there’s a tube down his throat. He should probably care about that, maybe find it uncomfortable, but that seems like too much effort. He’s surrounded by beeping machines and there’s a cannula in his nose helping him breathe. Pain is a remote concept. He knows it’s there, but he can’t feel any of it.

He feels unreal. He feels like he’s floating outside his body, untethered.

His attention drifts. Pepper’s voice brings him back.

“Tony?” Her hand squeezes his wrist. “Tony?”

He blinks. The room is fuzzy. He blinks again. Pepper’s hovering over him. He blinks twice so she knows he’s listening. He wants to take her hand but that much movement is beyond him.

Pepper slumps back to her seat and drops her face into her free hand. Her shoulders shake with repressed sobs. He watches her collect herself through a thousand tells only those closest to her would recognize. The squaring of her shoulders, the stiffness in her back as she straightens. There’s a fire in her eyes when she looks at him again, promising that whatever Tony needs, no matter what, she’ll move Hell and Earth to get it for him.

He doesn’t know what he did to earn her love, but he will be forever grateful that he has it for as long as she sticks with him. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with himself when he eventually drives her off, just like everyone else.

“Oh, Tony,” Pepper says, voice soft. She brushes tears from the corner of his eyes with her thumbs.

Huh. He’s crying. He’s going to blame whatever cocktail of drugs they have him on for giving him an excess of feelings.

“You’re going to be okay,” Pepper says, mistakenly assuming his tears are over his condition and not his fear of eventually driving off everyone he loves. “We’re here for you. Me and Rhodey and Yinsen. The Avengers too. We’ll keep you safe.”

Tony blinks. The Avengers are here? He turns his head but there’s no one else in the room.

Pepper chuckles. “Not right now.”

Well, duh. Of course, they wouldn’t sit with him in his boring ass hospital room watching him sleep. She meant it more in a spiritual “we’re all rooting for you” sense, obviously.

“Thor and Clint left to get lunch. They should be back soon. We didn’t want to eat in here in case you woke up.” She smiles at him, her lips quirked in silent apology. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a while before you’re back to solid food.”

The door opens and a blonde nurse in pink scrubs walks in. She smiles at him. “Hey, look who’s awake.” The nurse pats Pepper on the shoulder as she crosses the room to examine the machines hooked up on Tony’s other side. “I know that must be uncomfortable. I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake and we’ll see if we can get that out of you, okay?”

Tony nods as best he can. The nurse offers another friendly smile on her way out the door.

He’s tired. He shouldn’t be. He just woke up but it’s getting hard to keep his eyes open.

Pepper notices his struggle. Of course, she does. “It’s okay, Tony. You can go back to sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up again.”

He wants to stay awake. He really does. He wants to ask her what happened and why the Avengers are visiting his hospital room. There’s something important he’s forgetting. Something as big as a twenty-foot-tall robot. Bigger, maybe.

He can’t remember.

He fades from exhaustion, falling back asleep before the doctor arrives.

* * *

Tony’s awake when Bucky arrives shortly before the hospital’s dinner rounds. Bucky had grabbed a few street hotdogs on the way so he didn’t have to worry about eating in front of Tony, and so he could maybe stay a little later if the nurses would let him.

Clint is in the middle of a story about his time in the circus. He’s saying something about fighting a seal, but Bucky only half pays attention. He’s more interested in the soft smile on Tony’s face as he listens to Clint talk. It’s adorable, really. If he thought he had even the faintest chance of not getting caught, he’d sneak a picture, but Tony would definitely notice and then grow flustered and self-conscious. Instead, Bucky sits on the couch and watches Tony watching Clint.

He wishes he had Steve’s ability to take something he sees and capture it on paper. He wants to remember this moment forever.

Even as Iron Man, Tony has always held himself apart from the rest of the Avengers. Bucky had thought that was due to Tony’s unease around Steve and Iron Man being a robot that didn’t particularly understand human bonding. Now he wonders how much of that was because of Tony’s secret identity. It must have been hard, keeping his two personas separate.

Bucky may have spent a few days while Tony was unconscious being horribly embarrassed while he remembered every time he’d talked about Tony in front of Iron Man. God, he’d told Iron Man that he wanted to protect Tony. At least he hadn’t told Iron Man about his crush.

Yet.

He’s going to tell Tony. He has to. He can’t risk another life-threatening incident taking Tony away from him. At least if he tells Tony now, he can be shot down and have some time to bury his feelings before they have to work together on a professional basis. He hopes their friendship will be salvageable after, but that depends entirely on how Tony reacts.

Clint yawns and stretches once his tale winds down. He turns to Bucky and winks, the bastard. “I think I’m going to go scavenge some dinner. You going to be okay here with Old Frosty?”

Even the small movement of turning his head seems like an effort to Tony, but he’s smiling as he looks at Bucky. “Yeah. ‘s fine.” His speech is slow and slurred. The doctors have Tony on a heavy dose of pain killers with a side of mild sedatives. It gives Tony a soft, owlish look as his wide eyes blink slowly at Bucky.

“Okay. You kids behave.” Clint gently ruffles Tony’s hair on his way out. Instead of looking annoyed, Tony seems pleased with the attention.

“How are you doing?” Bucky asks, lamely.

“Sore.” Tony’s left shoulder moves in a half-shrug.

“Yeah, I imagine you will be for a little while. You feelin’ tired or are you up for a bit of company?”

“Not tired.”

“Okay.” Bucky relaxes back against the couch. He drums his fingers along the armrest, the only outward sign of nervousness that he allows. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, if that’s okay?”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Kay.”

The words stick in Bucky’s throat. He gapes, mouth opening and closing, nerves growing the longer Tony watches him flounder.

Fuck it. He leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees and twisting his hands between them.

“Bucky?”

He releases his breath in an explosive sigh. A rueful smile twists his lips and he looks at Tony. His eyes trace over the bandages and casts and all he can think of is how badly he wants to protect Tony. To make him happy. To see him smile.

“Tony, I wanted you to know that I really value our friendship. It means a lot to me. But when we pulled off Iron Man’s faceplate, and I saw you lying there and all that blood....”

Bucky shudders. He rubs his flesh hand over his face, as if the motion could chase away an image that Bucky knows will be seared into his brain forever. He looks back at Tony, reminding himself that Tony is alive and safe.

“I just need you to know how much you mean to me. If I ever lost you...” This is it. This is the time to make his big confession. “Tony, I-”

A swift knock interrupts him. Bucky frowns as Agent Ward slips inside the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Good evening.” Ward offers a bland smile. “Hill asked me to check up on you, Mr. Stark.”

The smile falls off Tony’s face as he regards the agent. “Um, hi?”

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Bucky frowns. “We were in the middle of a conversation. Can it wait?”

The look Ward shoots him is less than friendly. “It’s about Directory Fury.”

Right. Shit. Bucky sighs and slumps into the couch.

Tony looks at Bucky with confusion. None of them have mentioned the Director’s death yet. It seems Tony picks up that something’s wrong because his expression falls. “Uncle Nicky?”

“Do you remember what you spoke with Director Fury about last time you met?” Ward asks.

“I…” Tony stares at Bucky, eyes begging forgiveness, though Bucky has no idea what Tony wants him to forgive. “’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong, doll?”

Tony looks at Ward and sighs. “I found... HYDRA... in the files from AIM...”

Ward’s entire demeanor changes. He goes from passably friendly agent to something cold. Something familiar.

Bucky surges to his feet but a string of nonsense words in harsh Russian stop him. “_Longing. Rusted. Seventeen._“

“No.” The old trigger words make Bucky’s thoughts slow. Too slow. He can’t. Not with Tony in the room. Not when Tony’s injured and defenseless.

“_Daybreak. Furnace. Nine._“

He can feel the Winter Soldier taking over, shoving Bucky into the background. He’s terrified and he’s powerless to stop it.

“Bucky?” Tony sounds equally afraid. Bucky can’t even turn his head to look.

“_Benign. Homecoming. One._“

He makes it two steps toward Ward, metal arm outstretched, reaching for Ward’s throat, before the last word takes away the remainder of his free will.

“_Freight-car. Soldier?_“

The words come from his mouth, but Bucky isn’t the one saying them. “_Ready to comply._“

“What did... you do?” Tony wheezes. His heart monitor is rapidly increasing.

“Nothing you need to concern yourself about.” Ward pulls a syringe from his pocket and injects it into Tony’s IV.

“Wait...”

Tony’s hand twitches toward the call button. Ward easily grabs it, pinning it in place while the drug works its way into Tony’s system. Tony’s eyelids flutter and close. The heart monitor slows as Tony slips into unconsciousness. He’s not dead, though. Not yet.

Ward steps out of the room and comes back with a wheelchair. “Put him in the chair and follow me.”

The Soldier complies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The books that were read aloud to Tony while he was in the hospital:
> 
> Bucky – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Phillip K. Dick  
Clint – The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien  
Pepper – The Fault in Our Stars by John Green  
Bruce - The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human by V.S. Ramachandran  
Natasha – A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov  
Steve – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak  
Thor did not bring a book. Instead, he told Tony tales of his adventures in the Nine Realms.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA's got Tony and the Winter Soldier makes an appearance.

Tony wakes in agony. He expects pain, that much is a given after the abuse his body went through, but the painkillers have been doing a good job of muting it until now. He can’t help the whimper that escapes him as he gropes for the button to call the nurse.

Something hard stops him. He forces his eyes open and stares down in confusion at the handcuff chaining him to the bed railing. He’s not in the hospital anymore. That much is clear from green metal walls that make him think of military bunkers and the bowels of the Hellicarrier. Several monitors are arranged along one wall, but Tony can’t make out what their readings mean. He thinks one is his vital signs. There’s a tech in a white lab coat sitting in front of the monitors, but he doesn’t pay any attention to Tony.

There’s an IV drip in his arm but he’s certain it’s not feeding him painkillers. At least, not enough. He feels dizzy from the small amount of movement needed to look around. It would be so easy to fall back into unconsciousness, but he can’t. Not until he knows who kidnapped him.

He grabs the handrail with his good hand and shifts on the mattress. The casts on his arm and leg are dead weight. He whimpers. Fuck, it hurts. The head of the bed is tilted enough that he only has to scoot back a few inches to see the rest of the room. It takes him longer than he’d like to get into a good position and there are tears in his eyes, but he manages it. Barely.

When he looks up again, he startles, nearly passing out from the pain as his body jerks. There’s a man in tactical armor sitting in a weird chair directly across from him. The man stares at him over a muzzle-like mask that covers the lower half of his face. His long brown hair hangs down in a curtain around him. Steel blue eyes regard Tony coldly. It’s the eyes that spark recognition, though Tony’s never seen them like this.

“Bucky?” The other man doesn’t move. “Bucky, help me…” He tugs on the handcuffs, making the chain rattle.

“I’m afraid he’s not going to be much use to you,” a familiar voice says.

Tony stares in confusion as Secretary Pierce walks into the room with Agent Rumlow and two Strike Team members Tony doesn’t recognize following him. “Pierce? What...?”

Something about the situation strikes Tony as horribly wrong. It’s not just the way Bucky is staring at him like someone had drained the soul out of him. Rumlow’s looking at Tony like Tony’s a mouse and Rumlow’s a very satisfied cat.

“Stark.” Pierce stops at Tony's bedside and tosses a tablet on his lap. Tony groans as it jars his broken leg. “We're short on time, so I'm going to skip the usual pleasantries. I need you to finish the algorithm you've been putting off.”

Tony stares at the tablet. He instantly recognizes the code on screen. He wrote most of it. “Project Insight?” He stares at Pierce. “Fury scrapped this.”

Pierce crosses his arms and stares down at Tony. “Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Fury couldn’t see that. After the Battle of New York, he was worried about giving the Council too much power. We need that kind of power if we’re going to keep the world safe, so we’re going to give society a push, show it what’s really at stake.” Pierce taps the tablet. “But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine, and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves.”

There's so much information in Pierce's little speech that it takes Tony a minute to connect the dots. The agonizing pain might also be slowing him down a bit. “_You're_ HYDRA!?” He glances over at Bucky. “He’s...”

“The Winter Soldier.” Pierce saunters over to rest a hand on Bucky’s head. It reminds him of some of Howard’s old friends, showing off their prized hunting dogs. It makes him sick.

“He escaped…”

“We let him think that. It’s easier to manipulate someone when they have the illusion of freedom. And when we needed something done through more unsavory means, well, there are plenty of like-minded organizations that are happy to have our backing. You’re familiar with some of them. AIM, the Ten Rings…”

Bile chokes Tony’s throat and he forces it down. The last thing he needs is to vomit all over himself when he can’t even move to clean up.

“All this time…”

Fuck. Tears sting his eyes, but he refuses to let them fall. When Bucky finds out… If he ever finds out… But Tony keeps hoping that Bucky will break free of the Winter Soldier conditioning. He did once before.

“Why?” Tony asks. His rough voice gives away his inner turmoil. Pierce—the bastard—smirks.

“Ever since you and Fury had your little pow-wow, we've had too many people snooping into things that are better left alone. Killing Fury wasn't enough. Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff had to go investigating too. Unfortunately, we lost a great scientist when we killed them, so we need that impressive brain of yours to finish that algorithm.”

Tony’s entire body goes numb. For one second, he can’t feel the pain. All he feels is shock and hurt and the oncoming freight train of grief. “Fury's... dead? Tasha?”

Pierce grins. “I knew you were smart. Now,” Pierce walks over and taps the edge of the tablet, “get to work.”

Tony shakes his head. He can barely manage that little movement. “No.”

Pierce raises an eyebrow. “Don't you get it? You've been working for HYDRA for years. We've been pulling the strings all along.”

He feels like shit. He desperately wants painkillers and maybe something cold to drink, but he knows he’s not about to get either. He forces himself to focus enough to grit out, “You should know by now; I don't work for terrorists.”

Pierce sighs. “I was hoping you'd see things my way, but we've prepared for your insubordination.”

Tony sneers. “Fine. Torture me. I won’t do it.”

“No, no,” Pierce says. “We’re not going to torture you.” He turns to look at Bucky. “We’re going to torture him.”

* * *

“Do you know what this is about?” Bruce asks, warily eyeing the underground garage that Clint drives them into. Clint doesn’t blame him. Hulk’s been itching to come out ever since Bucky and Tony disappeared. They’re down four members and they have no idea what they’re walking into. No one wants Hulk bringing the building down on top of them.

“I know as much as you do,” Clint says. “All Hill told me was that it’s important.”

A SHIELD agent salutes as they pull into a nearly empty garage. “This way, sirs,” the agent says as soon as they exit the SUV. There are three other vehicles parked in the garage. One’s covered in bullet holes.

Clint’s eyes dart around the structure, taking in everything. The security is at a level of paranoid that would make Natasha proud, though it’s hidden so well the building would look abandoned to anyone untrained. It’s an old military instillation, unused for a while judging by the dust. 

Thor, Clint, and Bruce follow the agent through a reinforced steel door. Their steps echo down the cement corridors. They’re led into a room hung with rows of plastic sheeting. Clint hides his surprise as he spots Director Fury lying on a hospital bed and next to him... “Tasha?”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” She hops off the desk she’d been sitting on and gives him a one-armed hug. Her other arm is in a sling. It’s a different arm than the one she hurt last week. He’s not sure if that’s better or worse.

“There are a few things we need to bring you up to speed on,” Fury says. He’s looking pretty good for a dead man.

“So it seems.” Clint crosses his arms. “What the hell is going on?”

“Indeed,” Thor says. “I would know the reason behind this deception.”

“It’s bad,” Natasha says. Her face is devoid of expression, but Clint can still read her. It’s the tenseness in her lips and the slight pinch between her eyebrows that tell him that ‘bad’ is an understatement.

“Do I need to step out for this?” Bruce asks.

“You’ll want to see this first.” Hill pushes through the plastic to join them, followed by Steve and another guy—either an agent or a soldier—Clint doesn’t recognize. She hands Clint a tablet. “SHIELD’s been compromised.”

Bruce and Thor crowd behind him as he flips through the reports—Fury’s attempted assassination in DC, the missile strike on Camp Lehigh. His fingers pause on the last image, one of Bucky wheeling an unconscious Tony out of the hospital with Agent Ward.

“I thought the hospital footage was scrubbed. JARVIS couldn’t find anything.” For a second, he thinks that if Bucky has Tony, they must be safe, but his gut tells him there’s something wrong.

“We got to it first,” Hill says. “HYDRA’s been working from inside SHIELD. They’ve reactivated the Winter Soldier.”

“Well, fuck.”

“I do not understand,” Thor says. Bruce looks equally confused.

“Before your time,” Fury says. “Barnes used to be HYDRA’s number one assassin.”

“Until they sent him after Tony’s dad. Bucky defected, or at least we thought so.” Natasha adds.

“You mean HYDRA has Tony?” Bruce asks. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Steve sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “All this time, HYDRA had the Winter Soldier—and us—right under their thumb. I don’t know what they want Tony for, but it can’t be good.”

“I think I do.” Fury pulls another tablet from his bedside. After a few quick taps, the screens that had been showing Fury’s vitals change, filling with technical schematics. “It’s called Project Insight. Tony worked on it before SHIELD dropped the project. Too much risk. Too much of a chance for it to fall into the wrong hands.”

“So, what do we do about it?” Bruce asks the question that’s on all their minds.

All eyes turn to Cap as he says, “I have a plan.”

* * *

Tony flinches as Bucky lets out another muffled scream. He doesn’t want to watch but a HYDRA goon holds his head in a bruising grip. Another sob tears through his chest. It hurts. Everything hurts and he deserves it for letting them torture Bucky like this.

Another jolt of electricity has Bucky writhing in the chair.

“’m sorry,” Tony cries, hoping Bucky can hear him. “’m so sorry. Bucky. I can’t. Please, Bucky, I can’t....”

Bucky screams. His back arches and the screens surrounding the chair go haywire. Bucky’s eyes fall closed and he slumps. The monitor with Bucky’s heart rate screams in a long, flat tone.

“No.” A sob rips through Tony’s chest, nearly sending him unconscious with the agonizing ache it causes in his ribs. “No.”

The tech steps away. He won’t look at Tony. “We’ve lost him.”

Rumlow frowns. He angrily waves the tech away. “Get out of here.” He looks at one of the goons stationed by the doorway. “Prepare for Plan B.”

“No,” Tony moans. “No, he can’t... Please. Let me help him.”

“Too late, Stark.” Rumlow stands over the head of Tony’s bed, grinning. “Should have given in sooner. Things are about to get real unpleasant for you.”

“No, no, no.” Tony can’t fight off the hands that hold him down on the bed. He’s helpless. He couldn’t help Bucky. He can’t do anything to save himself.

Useless. Worthless.

The front of the bed falls flat, tearing Bucky from his view. Rumlow drags Tony up as far as the handcuff will allow, until Tony’s head hangs over the edge.

He’s not sure what they’re planning and that terrifies him. Then two goons walk in with buckets of water and he screams. He’s weak as a kitten. His struggling barely requires one goon to hold him down. Rumlow’s face is the last thing he sees before a towel covers his head.

Then comes the water.

He's drowning. All it takes is that first bucket being dumped over his head and the terror he’d felt at the hands of the Ten Rings comes flooding back. They’re going to kill him if he doesn’t do what they want. They already killed Bucky, Natasha, Fury, and Cap. They won’t hesitate to kill him, but he can’t do what they want.

Millions of people will die.

His life isn’t worth that. Bucky’s life isn’t worth that.

He thinks Bucky might understand. Bucky wouldn’t have wanted Tony to give in.

He’ll find out what Bucky thinks soon enough. Maybe then he can apologize. Maybe he can finally admit how much he loves Bucky.

Rumlow pulls the towel away. “Change your mind yet?”

Tony coughs up water. His chest feels like it’s being torn apart from the inside out. His hand twitches toward Bucky. If only he could reach him.... He doesn’t want to die like this. He doesn’t want to die alone. “Bucky...”

The towel covers his face. Water pours into his lungs.

He wants to see Bucky. He needs him. If only he hadn’t been such a coward. He should have told Bucky how he felt ages ago. At least then it wouldn’t be a last regret hanging over him.

“How about it?” Rumlow’s voice comes to him from far away.

“Bu... Bucky...”

It’d be so easy to give in. To give up. He’s suffered enough.

Something crashes. The water stops but he’s too weak to cough it out. There are three heavy thuds beside him. A hand presses against his chest and he’s rolled onto his side. He coughs up water. He’s so close to passing out but a familiar voice holds him.

“That’s it, doll. Get it out. Come on. Breathe for me, Tony.”

He knows that voice, but it doesn’t make any sense. Bucky’s supposed to be dead.

“I’m here, darling. I’ve got you. I’m gonna get you out of here, just hold on for me. Just a little longer.”

“Buc...” His fingers twitch, searching for something to hold on to. A metal hand closes around his.

He wants to stay conscious. He really does, but he can’t. As soon as Bucky picks him up, the pain pulls him under faster than he can speak. The last thing he hears is Bucky’s heartbeat, strong and steady against his cheek.

* * *

Bucky feels the moment the Winter Soldier dies. His heart stops, and it’s like the chains that have been tying him to HYDRA break.

Finally, he's free.

His mind floats. There's no pain, no orders that his body obeys while his mind screams. There's only blissful nothing.

Then he hears it, a faint voice calling to him from worlds away.

“Bucky...”

_Tony._

Something's wrong. Tony's hurt. He sounds so scared. Bucky promised himself he wouldn't let Tony get hurt again.

“Bu... Bucky...”

He sounds weaker now. Bucky's name is broken by a sob.

They're hurting him.

No. He won't allow it. He won't let HYDRA have Tony too.

He'll kill them. He'll kill every last one of them.

He opens his eyes. He's still strapped to the chair but that doesn't matter. The straps are meant to hold him still, not hold him down. He breaks through them with an enraged roar. The men surrounding Tony jerk back, startled. The one holding the bucket of water above Tony's head throws it. Bucky bats it out of the air. They reach for guns but they're too slow.

Bucky goes after the biggest threat first. He grabs Rumlow’s gun in his metal first, not even slowing as it goes off in his hand. He punches Rumlow in the face as hard as he can. Rumlow falls and doesn't move.

He switches the gun to his other hand while he redirects the guns pointed at him. He deflects two more shots with his metal arm. The last two goons go down with one bullet each.

Tony coughs weakly. Bucky mutters soothing nonsense as he pulls the towel off Tony's face and helps him onto his side so he can cough up water.

They’re going to have to get through who knows how many guards to escape the Hellicarrier they’re on. If he's lucky, maybe he'll be able to get a message out to.... Not Steve. Pierce said Steve was dead. Natasha too. That's a hurt he'll deal with later. He can't think about that right now, not if he wants to get Tony to safety.

Clint. He can call Clint.

“Buc...” Tony coughs. His lungs don't sound good. Bucky really hopes his broken ribs didn't puncture anything. The last thing he needs is Tony bleeding internally.

He takes Tony’s hand in his. “I’m right here. I’m right here with you, Tony.”

Tony's eyes close. He's still breathing. It's harsh and shallow but it’s better than nothing.

How the fuck is he going to get them out?

He grabs guns and keycards off the dead agents. He can't bring the bed with him and there isn't a wheelchair in the room. Tony definitely isn’t walking anywhere anytime soon.

“I'm sorry, honey,” Bucky says as he rips strips of fabric from one of the dead guy's shirts. “This is going to hurt but we gotta get you out of here.”

He makes a crude harness and straps Tony to his back. The pained cry Tony makes when Bucky lifts him goes straight through Bucky like a dagger to the heart, but this is the best they’re going to manage. Bucky makes sure all the guns are reachable, takes a deep breath, and steps into the hallway.

There are two HYDRA agents at either end of the hall. Bucky barely looks as he takes them out, firing with both hands. He’s fuzzy on directions but he’s assuming this Hellicarrier is laid out the same as Fury’s. He moves down through the levels of the ship, taking out everyone that gets in his way. He doesn’t hesitate. Anything that moves gets a bullet in it.

The ship corridors offer little cover. His mission is to protect Tony. It’s fine if he gets hit, as long as Tony’s safe. A stray shot grazes his thigh. He’s bleeding from his stomach, but the bullet didn’t go through to hurt Tony.

He’s fine. He can do this. He can get Tony to safety.

He stumbles into a room with metal walkways and a domed floor made of glass. He looks down at the Potomac. They’re not in SHIELD’s hanger, obviously. This complicates his mission.

“Bucky?”

The familiar voice makes him turn. Steve’s standing near the center of the room, doing something to the computer there. “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you were captured.”

Bucky shrugs as best he can. “Got a way off this boat?”

Steve’s eyes fix on Tony. “Is he?”

Bucky resists the urge to check Tony’s pulse again. “Alive.” He prays he’s not lying.

Steve nods and turns his head to the side. “Clint, I need an evac ASAP. I’ve got Bucky and Tony.”

The door behind Bucky bangs open. He turns and fires off four shots. The gun jams on the fifth. Fucking HammerTech. He throws it at the target and pulls a new one.

The Quinjet appears below them.

“I see you,” Steve says. “Pull up to the hangar. We’ll try to make our way up.”

“Don’t bother.” Bucky switches to the semi-automatic he’d liberated. It takes several shots before the glass cracks enough to make a hole out. “Have him open the hatch.”

Steve shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “You’re crazy, you know that, right?”

“Says the guy that regularly jumps out of perfectly good airplanes without a parachute.”

Steve groans but follows Bucky as he jumps down to the floor. “That was one time.”

They wait on one of the metal struts while Clint repositions. The hangar yawns open. Another wave of goons pours through the door.

Steve’s shield bounces off the walls and several skulls. “Go, I’ve got this.”

“You better be right after me.”

“Go.”

Bucky lowers himself carefully through the hole, making sure nothing scratches Tony. He hangs in open air for a second, then drops the rest of the way. Bruce is waiting by the open doors.

“Help me get him secure,” Bucky says. There’s a bench seat folded down. He squats so that Tony’s partially seated. Once Bruce has a good grip on Tony, Bucky cuts the ties holding Tony against him.

“What happened?” Bruce asks.

Bucky shakes his head. He’s tired, both from being electrocuted and ongoing blood loss. He really wants to pass out, but he can’t. Not until they’re safe.

He helps Bruce buckle Tony down. Steve drops into the hangar next to them.

The Quinjet interior is spinning around him. Bucky slumps against the wall. He doesn’t have a choice. He feels like a marionette with its strings cut.

The hangar doors close. He’s done it. Tony’s safe.

Steve’s concerned face fills his vision. His mouth’s moving. Bucky can’t hear a thing. The hand he slaps against Steve’s shoulder is covered in blood.

It’s okay. Tony’s safe. He can rest now.

Bucky closes his eyes and falls against Steve, trusting his best friend to catch him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony recovers, Bucky is sweet, and the Avengers are the best kind of found family a young genius could ever hope for.

Tony wakes up surrounded by medical equipment. Again. He sighs, then regrets it as the exhalation causes his lungs to spasm. At least the ensuing coughing fit doesn't hurt much. God, he loves painkillers.

"Here, let me help." Someone moves to his right. There's a mechanical whir as the bed tilts. 

Tony feels of rush of dizziness as the bed moves. He blinks twice. The room solidifies back into something that makes sense.

"How're you feeling?"

It takes Tony a second to process the question. He knows that voice, and the face that's attached, but he's not really sure what Steve's doing sitting next to his hospital bed. Steve doesn't like him. Shouldn't Steve be with.... "Bucky?"

Steve points to something on Tony's other side.

Moving his head is much harder than it should be, but it's worth it to see Bucky stretched across a couch, his legs hanging off one end.

"He's fine, by the way," Steve says before Tony can prompt him. "He got shot—of course that idiot would—but nothing the serum can't handle. Refused to stay in his own room, so we dragged a couch in."

Tony wants to laugh, but he can't get over the fact that Bucky got hurt because of him. Bucky had been shot while saving him. Bucky.... Bucky died, and he thought... Tears prick unbidden and he blinks rapidly to make them go away. Fuck. He can't even reach up to wipe them away.

"Hey." Steve wraps his hand around Tony's arm, right above a new set of bandages that cover his wrist. "Hey, it's okay. Bucky's okay, he's just sleeping. He's going to be so happy when he sees that you're awake."

"Really?" Tony asks, and he sounds so fucking pathetic, like a fucking kid. He's really proved how not cut out he is as an Avenger, and now that they know that he's Iron Man, they're not going to want someone as useless as him on the team.

"Really." Steve smiles at him. It's such a kind, sincere smile that it makes Tony pause in his self-flagellation. Surely Steve wouldn't smile at him like that if he were mad?

Steve shifts his gaze to stare at Bucky for a long moment before he exhales heavily and scrubs a hand over his face. "Tony, I.... There's something I need to say to you and it's long, long overdue."

Fuck. Panic makes Tony's chest seize up and he can hear the heart monitor speeding up. This is it. This is where Steve throws him off the team and tells him-

"I'm sorry."

That was not at all what he was expecting. Tony elegantly responds with a strangled, "What?"

Steve looks Tony straight in the eyes and takes Tony's hand in both of his. "I'm sorry. When we first met, back on the Hellicarrier, I said some awful things. We all did and I know it was because the scepter influenced us, but I've never told you how sorry I am about what I said. It wasn't true, and I should have apologized a long time ago."

This is because they found out he's Iron Man. Now that they know, they think they owe him something, because he fought beside them, but.... Steve keeps going, heedless of Tony's spiraling self-doubt.

"Even before I found out you were Iron Man, I knew you were a good person and a brilliant agent. You gave all of us a place to stay. You brought us together and made sure we had everything we could ever need—food, clothing, weapons, armor. I never thanked you for all that you do for us. I know you're not very fond of us-"

"No." He has to cut Steve off there because Steve thinks.... "No. I like you. All of you."

Steve flashes that blinding smile again and it seeps into Tony's core, filling a bit of that dark, hollow place that Howard's constant criticism and neglect tore out of him a long time ago.

"Good," Steve says. "That's good. I hope that means we can be better friends in the future. I'd like to get to know the real Iron Man."

"O-Okay." What else can he say to that? How could he possibly turn down Captain America's offer of friendship?

"I think-"

Tony never gets to hear what Steve thinks. There's a loud snore-snort from the other side of the room and they both turn as Bucky startles himself awake, nearly falling off the couch as he jerks upright. Bucky's eyes land on Tony immediately. It's like a Christmas light show, the way Bucky smiles when he sees Tony staring back at him.

Steve chuckles softly and pats Tony's arm. "That's my cue." He stands and heads for the door. "I'm going to get some coffee. I'll grab something for you too, Buck."

"Yeah, sure." Bucky waves absently. His eyes never leave Tony as he crosses the room, dropping into Steve's vacated chair. "Hey, doll. How're you feeling?"

Tony would shrug if he didn't think it'd be more pain than he wants to deal with. He sort of tilts his head in an approximation. "Painkillers are good."

The laugh that spills out of Bucky is the most amazing thing Tony's ever heard, not just because it reminds him that Bucky's alive, but also because it makes Tony feel safe. He knows Bucky won't let anything happen to him. He came back from the dead—partially dead? near death?—to save Tony from HYDRA and that.... That counts for a whole lot in Tony's book.

"Yeah," Bucky nods. "Yeah, you're going to be on those for a while." He takes Tony's hand in his and squeezes lightly. Tony never wants him to let go. "I'm afraid you're grounded for a while, Shellhead, but you'll be back watching our six from the skies in no time."

Bucky's words make the ball of anxious worry inside of Tony relax. "Not off the team?" he asks, just to be sure.

"No, sweetheart. Not off the team."

It's such a relief to hear that it takes Tony a minute to register the endearment. Bucky's always been a little flirty, but he's never called Tony 'sweetheart'. His face heats and he looks down at their joined hands.

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you, Tony."

Apparently it's the day for confessions. Tony's heart speeds up for an entirely different reason than before.

Bucky leans down and presses his lips, soft as a butterfly's touch, across the back of Tony's hand. When he looks back up at Tony, his eyes are sharp, pinning Tony with their intensity. "I've been meaning to tell you that I'm sweet on you. Have been for a long time, but I was too chicken to say anything, afraid that you wouldn't feel the same. But after we nearly lost you..." Bucky sucks in a harsh breath.

Tony does his best to squeeze Bucky's hand. He can't let Bucky keep floundering, not when Tony.... "I feel the same. Bucky, I can't... I can't lose you. Not again."

The laugh Bucky lets out is wet with pre-shed tears. Tony can feel moisture gathering in his eyes as well.

"God, look at us," Bucky chuckles. "What a pair."

"Don't leave me," Tony says. He tries to fill the words with all the things he can't bring himself to say. Not yet. Not here.

Don't die.

Don't leave him alone.

"Never," Bucky says. "You're stuck with me, sweetheart. Darling. Doll. Stuck with me until you get sick of me."

"I won't. I won't ever."

"Good." Bucky squeezes his hand again. He stares at Tony like Tony's a treasure. Like Tony's something precious. "I'd like to kiss you, if you're feeling up for that."

As if Tony would ever say no to that. He doesn't care how much of his body is bruised and broken. He wants all the kisses. "Yes. Please. Always."

Bucky slides the chair closer to Tony's bed. He places his free hand on Tony's cheek, keeping Tony's head steady as Bucky leans in. The kiss is so soft, so gentle. It's unlike all the other kisses Tony's ever had. There's no frantic press of lips, no delving tongue or biting teeth, no heat, but that makes it all the sweeter. It's a promise. A sign of more to come, when Tony's body is less broken, and he's not stuck in a hospital bed.

Bucky leans back in the chair. He's grinning softly at Tony, and Tony can feel himself grinning back like a love-struck idiot. But that's okay. Bucky knows him, all of him, and he loves Tony. He loves all of him, and that's more than Tony ever hoped for.

* * *

**Ten Weeks Later...**

Tony vibrates in his seat, too excited to keep still. Yinsen sends a fond look over the tops of his glasses. "Do I need to get one of the soldiers to hold you still?"

Tony's grin takes a salacious turn. "Fun as that would be, Bucky and I would rather keep that in the bedroom."

Yinsen huffs a quiet laugh. He's been around Tony long enough now that mentions of Tony's sex life are easily ignored. Not that Tony's had much of a sex life recently, thanks to Bucky's insistence on waiting until Tony's casts are off to do anything strenuous, and Tony knows Yinsen knows that. It's part of the reason Tony's so excited.

"I need you to hold still if you want this off."

"Fiiine." Tony draws the word out with a grin. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, willing the nerves and spastic energy to subside long enough to get through this. He lets the breath out. "Okay, go."

Yinsen shakes his head, but he picks up the small saw and carefully cuts away the cast on Tony's arm. The one on his leg had come off last month and Tony is so happy to be free of them both.

The saw shuts off and Yinsen pulls the cast away. Tony's almost sad to see it go. The Avengers had covered the entire thing in doodles and scrawled well-wishes. Tony isn't the sentimental type. He doesn't have keepsakes or mementos, but he's tempted to keep his cast. He keeps his mouth shut as Yinsen drops it in the bin.

JARVIS already saved a full scan of both of his casts if he ever really wants to see them again.

Yinsen hands him a wet cloth. Tony gladly scrubs his arm clean. He's looking forward to a real shower, finally. No more wrapping his casts in plastic bags. He's still not great with bathtubs or standing water—thanks, Rumlow, for reopening a can of PTSD that Tony'd worked so hard to bury after Afghanistan—but he can deal with a shower.

"Awesome." Tony holds his now clean arm up and flexes his fingers. It's sore, but that's more from disuse than the breaks. "Thanks, Yinsen. You're the best." He's set to race from the room, but Yinsen grabs his shirt and pushes him back down.

"You understand that you're not cleared for full duty yet, correct?"

Tony sighs. He's been over this at least a dozen times with Steve, Bucky, Natasha, and Bruce. "Yes, I know. No close combat. Ranged defense and aerial support only until both you and JARVIS give the all clear."

"And if JARVIS determines you've put too much stress on your body?"

Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes. He likes to pretend he's left his teenage antics behind. He hasn't, but he tries around Yinsen. "Then I will remove myself from the field or JARVIS will override the suit and make me leave."

"Very good." Yinsen stands and puts his tools away. "Please try to rest, though I know you won't."

He gives Yinsen a salute on his way out the door. "No promises."

Yinsen's smiling as he waves Tony off. Tony's grin only gets wider as he steps into the elevator. He will never take the ability to move around on his own two feet for granted again. Not that having Bucky carry him around wasn't nice. He wouldn't argue if Bucky wanted to do that again, preferably on the way to a bedroom. Speaking of.... "Hey, JARVIS, where's Bucky?"

"Sergeant Barnes is in the communal area."

"Awesome." 

It's hard to believe how much has changed since his injury. He doesn't feel like he's encroaching on the Avengers' territory when he comes up to the Avengers' floors. He'd even go so far as to say he's welcome there now. He's always had a solid friendship with Natasha and Bruce, but now Thor grins whenever Tony enters the room and Clint treats him like a little brother. Steve always stops whatever he's doing to say hello, and he's even come down to the workshop to hang out with Tony and Bucky a couple times each week. Even the new guy, Sam, actually seems to like Tony, and it's been so, so long since Tony's been surrounded by people who are actually happy to have him around all the time.

And Bucky.... Tony is madly, happily in love with Bucky.

The elevator doors open. Before Tony can step out, he's met with a chorus of voices shouting, "Surprise!"

Tony startles, nearly stumbles back against the wall, but Clint and Sam are both waiting to pull him into the common room. There's a banner running along the wall behind the TV that says 'Congratulations' in bright red and yellow. The coffee tables are piled high with snacks and soda. There's even a cake on the kitchen island, shaped like Iron Man's helmet.

He's overwhelmed. He's had a lot of galas and charity events thrown in his honor, but he can't remember the last time he's been part of something this small and intimate. Probably not since his MIT days with Rhodey. "What's all this for?"

"We're celebrating your freedom," Clint says.

Tony grins and shakes his head. "Happy to finally be free of Tony-sitting duty?" He spreads his arms and twirls in a circle because he can. "It's so good to have all my limbs back in one piece."

Bucky walks up behind him and pulls Tony into his arms. "If you think we're gonna let you go back to hiding in your workshop all the time, you need to think again." Bucky lifts Tony like he weighs nothing and spins around. Tony can't help the bright, happy laugh that spills out of him. "I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you up here if I have to."

"Kinky."

Steve rolls his eyes. Natasha and Clint send them knowing smirks while the others smile at them in a mix of amusement and exasperation.

Natasha places both hands on his face and tilts his head down so she can kiss his forehead. "No more hiding, kotenok."

"I would be saddened by the loss of your company," Thor adds.

"Fiiine." His tone is sarcastic, but they look at him fondly. They've learned to read the sincerity behind his bluster. That should probably scare him—he's not used to letting people close—but it only brings comfort.

He knows he hasn't been the easiest to be around the last few weeks. He hates being an invalid, hates having to have people cater to him, but none of the Avengers had treated him like he was a burden. Even when he was being moody, they still sat with him watching TV marathons and movie after movie, playing board games or cards, or being his hands when he thought he'd go mad if he didn't work on one of his projects.

They'd endured it all and they were still here, smiling, happy to see him. It gave him hope that maybe he wasn't destined to drive away everyone he cared about.

"Okay, none of that." Bucky says, lifting him off his feet again. "I can see the gears turning in that head of yours and I don't think I like where that's going. We're here to celebrate."

Tony squeaks indignantly as he's carried over to the couch and dropped unceremoniously onto the center. Bucky vaults over the back after him and settles on one side while Natasha snuggles against his other side. The others flit around them, passing around drinks and snacks before settling into their usual configurations. Steve and Bruce each take an armchair to themselves. Thor and Sam lounge on another couch while Clint settles on his stomach on the floor.

"So, what'll it be tonight?" Clint asks. He shifts onto one elbow and throws pieces of popcorn from the bowl in front of him at Steve. Steve tries unsuccessfully to catch the popcorn in his mouth.

"I believe our celebrant has the right of choosing," Thor announces.

All eyes turn on Tony and he groans. "Haven't you had enough of watching what I want?"

Bruce shrugs. "What's one more night?" There's a twinkle in his eye as he speaks that suggests it's not going to be only one more night.

"You're spoiling me," Tony accuses.

Natasha bumps her shoulder against his. "You should get used to that."

Tony rolls his eyes. He gives up trying to argue. He'd never admit it, but their attention makes him melt a little inside. His parents had been distant at best, and while Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey are good friends, there was always something going on that divided their attentions, whether that was schoolwork at MIT or the operations of Stark Industries. It feels like the best kind of luxury to have the Avengers—to have his friends—dote on him and mean it.

He's tempted to say Star Wars, an eternal favorite of the group, but they watched that last week. "Back to the Future?"

"I do not think I have seen this," Thor says with a broad grin. He settles deeper into the couch with a bowl of Cheetos on his lap and another of Doritos waiting next to him.

JARVIS dims the lights and queues up the first movie. As the opening starts, Bucky leans under the coffee table in front of them and pulls out a flat, rectangular box.

"What's this?" Tony asks as Bucky sets the box on his lap.

Bucky shrugs and stares at the screen with forced nonchalance. "I got you a little something."

Tony raises an eyebrow. "You didn't need to get me anything."

"No, but I wanted to."

Tony's aware of the rest of the group subtly eyeing him while pretending to watch the movie. "Okay."

He lifts the lid and pulls back the layers of tissue paper. Inside is a t-shirt. A very specific t-shirt. It's Black Sabbath's 1978 US Tour t-shirt. Tony frowns as he lifts the soft material out of the box. He knows this shirt. He used to own this shirt. It's the same shirt he'd been wearing when he'd been injured, the day everyone found out his secret.

He turns to Bucky with wonder and confusion. "How did you know?"

"That it was one of your favorites?" Bucky shrugs. "Lucky guess."

"What he means," Natasha stage-whispers from his right, "is that he's had a horrible crush on you for ages."

Tony blushes. He stares down at the shirt in his lap. There are a lot of ways he could brush it off, pretend like this small gesture doesn't mean the world to him. He's used to that—hiding away the things that really mean something to him so they can't be used against him later—but he doesn't want to. He doesn't need to hide from the Avengers. They've already proved the lengths they'll go to protect him.

Instead, he leans into Bucky's side and plants a kiss on Bucky's cheek. "Thank you. It means a lot."

Bucky beams like Tony'd handed him the keys to the universe. He doesn't say anything, but he leans into Tony too, so that they're pressed close. Bucky's flesh hand curls around Tony's. "Anything for you, doll."

Warmth spreads through Tony and he smiles back at Bucky. "Right back at you."

They turn back to the movie. He feels like a bit of an idiot. He hid himself behind Iron Man and his workshop walls for so long when he could have been enjoying this strange, new kind of family all along. He feels cheated, almost, though he knows he only has himself and his insecurities to blame.

There's no going back and changing the past, no making up lost time, but he can enjoy what he has now. He can treasure his found family. Nothing—not AIM or HYDRA or the Ten Rings—is going to take that away from him because he knows, if there comes a time when he can't free himself, he knows his family will always be there to rescue him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this, even if it took forever and a day to complete. :)
> 
> Kotenok (котенок) = kitten


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